Moms and Kids

I have to say, I’m glad I only had nine girls settle for spring break because this has been a rough round.  Hilda was my oldest girl bred, and she will be retiring.  She is struggling to feed the boys, and they are not good about taking a bottle.

Hilda with Horace and Jasper nursing

And she looks horrible.  She’s certainly earned retirement.

Hilda

Cutie is doing well, but she started out with mastitis.  Thankfully, she responded quickly to the meds, and all is well.

Cutie and BJ

Anita’s eye ended up getting infected, so she had to go back to the vet to get a shot of antibiotics.  Then Mom was coming out to help me put salve in it.  She’s doing really well now.

Anita playing on her mom,LilyAnn

At least Perdita’s milk came in.  It just took a couple of days with some supplemental bottles.

Perdita and Moxie

It’s not all been struggles.  There are a lot of happy healthy moms and kids.

Athena and Roger

Aphrodite with Cruella and Estella

Penelope feeding Nessa

Melba nursing Onyx

And we’re doing better every day!

Looking Better

Having triplets and mastitis was really hard on Chiffon. It’s a good thing we took one kid from her because she’s still been struggling to raise two.

Chiffon and her three bucks

Chiffon is looking much better.

Chiffon

If you remember, the little stinkers won’t take a bottle from me.  But all three have been coming into the milk room in the evenings to eat sweet feed/calf starter.

Chiffon, Nestle and Sonny

Usually, Chiffon is waiting for me by the door when I get home; but sometimes I let Dolly in first because I have to track down Sonny and Nestle.

Dolly

This makes Chiffon impatient.

peeking in the door

This is really helping all three of them.

Sonny

I’m pretty confident they will all pull through.

I know it’s helping because it’s getting harder to carry the two boys across the barnyard to the milk room.

Over the weekend, I caught them lounging around chewing their cuds!  That means all that sweet feed and grass from pasture will really start to help them.

Nestle in front; Sonny in back

I keep telling Chiffon that it’s not always this hard.  Poor girl.

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!