Cary & Mel

Meet Cary & Mel, twin bucks, and their nanny Dot. Get it “Cary-Mel,” like caramel, like their primary coloring. They arrived about two weeks ago, but Dot has kept them indoors and fairly secluded until the past couple of days. She is introducing them to the rest of the herd slowly and carefully as some of the 1-year-old withers want to be a bit more playful than they can handle right now. Mel is the smaller of the two, with the white blaze on his forehead.

It is probably better that she has kept them inside as our spring weather is more winter like. Yesterday we got about 5″ of new snow and today what hadn’t melted was nicely frozen and crunchy. These guys’ little legs would have had a workout in that much snow.

Twin Doelings

Onion, the alpha doe in our herd, had twin doelings Tuesday, March 6.

What a difference a week or two makes. Two weeks ago we had lost a dozen kids, all either stillborn or too premature to survive and thrive. There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with the kids, other than they lacked some developmental markers. We had a warm snap and then the temperatures dipped and we got another week of snow. All the first-time nannies kidded early. Maybe the weather was just a coincidence. Maybe. It had been a sad kidding season for our young goat herders.

But, life marches on and we have to live in the here and now. Over the past week we have welcomed six healthy little kids out in the pasture. Five are in the care of their nanny and one is bottle-fed; two little bucks and three doelings.

Acceptance

This little baby arrived after a very difficult birth the evening of March 1. I found her lodged in the birth canal, partially expelled and unresponsive when I returned home from work. We had no idea how long the nanny and babe had been like this. I thought all was lost for the baby. After seperating the nanny from the rest of the herd, I tugged and tugged and tugged on her her hooves. After about 30 minutes of work she was free. The baby hit the ground limp and unresponsive. The nanny ran for the feeding area. I went the house to prepare to dispose of the baby.

When I returned to the goat hut I found the baby doe in the corner of the shed, looking healthy, crying for her nanny and cuddled up with the chickens to keep warm. What a wonderful suprise! She is healthy and spirited.

We let the nanny have a couple of hours to bond with the babe, but she refused the baby. We are now bottle feeding with great success.

Signs of Spring

Suprise! This is what I found when I went out to do my morning chores, March 1. Maybe we will name these jack-n-jill twins “Lion” and “Lamb” as they brought in the month of March. This is a second kidding for Goat With No Name (yes, she has a theme song, can’t you hear it in the background?) and she is a wonderfully attentive nanny.

We have had a dozen babies born at 3 Billy Goats Bluff in the past few weeks, but these are the only two survivors. Sadly, the others were too premature to survive or were born still.