… no goat kids yet. Flora has been separated from the others so that she can have some privacy and rest these last few days. Still, she continues to keep us guessing. Who do you think will deliver first: Flora, or April the giraffe? I’m not holding my breath over the giraffe calf, but I am eager for Flora to get down to business. You guessed it: a freshened goat means more dairy! Milk has been our running theme as…
Our quiet winter days have come to an abrupt end. Not that we ever have anything quiet around here; we do have three boys aged seven and under. Perhaps I should have said ‘uneventful’ rather than quiet. Gone are the moments of peacefully watching sap boil, we’re now full into milking, seed starting and mud. So far we’ve started onion, broccoli, pea and butternut squash indoors. The bay window in the front of our house has trays of seedlings set before it,…
I think I’ve taken more pictures of these newborn goats than I did of my own newborn children. To my defense, most of the pictures have my kids in them too. Ever try to take a picture of squirmy goat kids with squirmy human kids? You just take 80 or so shots of the same thing and hope that one or two of them aren’t blurry. Pepper is a great mom. On more than one occasion I’ve watched her stick…
We have goat kids! Thursday night found Steve and I playing midwives to a goat. And thank goodness, the best word to describe the experience was ‘textbook.’ The whole process was exactly what we’d read a best case scenario would look like. Even better: I wasn’t on my own! This kidding happened in the evening after Steve was home from work. I’d been imagining for weeks that she’d go into labor on a freezing afternoon when Steve wasn’t due home until late…
Well, our watch for goat kids has had to start slightly earlier than we were planning. Pepper is due March 30th, eight days from today. I wasn’t planning on setting up any kind of monitor until perhaps the 24th, but she has been showing distinct signs of being ready to go, which necessitates the monitor to ensure that we’re there to assist. What kind of signs, you ask? Well, her udder is really developing, and her kids have dropped. She’s…