Odds and Ends

Xerxes has stayed where he belongs.  That’s a good thing.

Xerxes

I had a lady cardinal show up the other day between rain showers.

Sky–just because he’s handsome.

Sky tracking the scent of a big buck who was in the yard

Rocky likes my bathroom sink.

Rocky

I only have a few goats left who need their hooves trimmed.  Several will get them done after kidding.  The others are a pain.  I caught Flower and got her done, but everyone else freaked out and would let me get close to them.  This might take some trickery (aka food) to catch the ones I have left.

Flower

My mom had to come out and get more milk for Chiffon’s little triplet, Lazarus, so he came out to visit too!  He is doing quite well.

Mom and Lazarus

She is still trying to fill her nest, but I keep taking the eggs.  We’ll see which one of us lasts longer.  I’m betting she wins in the end.

The geese are also enjoying the gate to the front pasture being opened up. It’s much easier for them to go back and forth.

When I was scrolling through the blog last Sunday, it reminded me that I put Tansy with her mom and Hilda and Freddie.  Remember I said she didn’t settle with oopsie babies.  Well, that means she is probably bred for June babies even though I didn’t see her come back into heat.

Tansy and Cupid

That means I still have to decide whether or not to sell her.  At least this time, if she’s bred, it’s not her twin brother.

A Crazy Sunday

Even though I was feeling much better, I went back to bed after my 6:30 am check of goats because I figured I deserved it.  When I went back out at 8:45, I encountered Reva coming up from pasture.

Reva

I put her in the greenhouse, and she was happy to stay in there.  It wasn’t very long at all before she had a little buck.

Reva and her buck

When she started pushing again, I saw a nose.  You cannot be born nose first, so I pushed her back a little bit, and thankfully, her hooves were under her chin so it was easy to get them out.  She was little enough, she just slipped right out when I got her feet in front of her.

Reva and her doe

The are both doing well.  Since it was a bit chilly out yet, I put a heat lamp in there.  Some little girl really likes her heat lamp.

As soon as I got done with Reva, I went out to check everyone else.  It was obvious that both Hera and Caroline were going to have their babies.  I spent some time quickly getting pens made and putting a gate back on the outside pen to the greenhouse.  Hera was next.

Hera

She has two beautiful little girls!

So far, most of the babies have been easy, even when I’ve had to reposition them a bit.  Next was Caroline.

Caroline (with Gidget behind her)

She was a pain in the rear, making me drag her all the way to the green house.  She was not happy with my choice of where she was going to have her kid(s).

Then she was a drama queen.

Seriously.

Then she couldn’t have her baby because fluffy goats should not try to have just one big kid.  They don’t come out very easily.

Caroline and her buck

But I got him!  That is enough for one day.

A Rough Saturday

By the time I got done with chores and Chiffon and sending the kid to my mom, I was done.  The Covid vaccine kicked in and I had to go nap.  I had a mild headache, but I was absolutely exhausted.  I set my alarm to do a bedtime check of goats. By then I had a low grade fever.  I set the alarm and checked goats in the night.  I checked early in the morning.  I went back to bed, and the next time I got up to check goats, I had to shut Ava in.

Ava

I was feeling better–the fever was gone, and the headache was coming and going, but I could handle it.  Ava finally got down to business right after lunch.  She had triplets!

Fresh out of mom–two bucks and a doe (front)

I thought she might have that many in there.  She was huge.

All dried off (girl in the middle)

By the way, see the wattles on that adorable little girl.  She’s not supposed to have them.  Wattles are dominant, so if either of her parents carried the gene for wattles, they should have wattles.  Neither of her parents have wattles.  I guess they came from grandma Wanda and nobody told Ava she couldn’t pass them on.

wattled little girl

No wattles on the boys

Everyone was doing well, and by then I had to take another nap.  That’s pretty much all I did.  Luckily, nobody else went into labor.  I did remember that Chiffon’s udder felt a bit hard when I was trying to get her limp little boy to nurse, so I went back to check, and it was totally hard.

Chiffon

She had early mastitis.  I gave her meds.  It is starting to feel better.

note the red and odd lumpy look

Both boys are doing well.  The one my mom has is doing well too, but I haven’t been in to take a picture of him.

Then I went back to bed.  Sometime in the night, the fever broke, the headache disappeared, and the “brain fog” disappeared.  I kid you not, it was the middle of the night when I figured out I gave Chiffon the wrong dose of antibiotics.  She needed more than I gave her.  But I am back from the vaccine, just in time for a crazy Sunday!