Update

The babies are doing really well. The owner of the buck came by to take a look at them this weekend and disbudded (removed the horn buds) for me.

Here are some updated pictures of the boys...

And, of course, some picture of Trouble getting, well, in trouble...

Birthing Goats

As promised, more photos!

Felicity lost her ligaments Tuesday night, so I knew the birth would be soon. Wednesday morning Felicity was resting comfortably (well, as comfortable as a goat can at that point in her pregnancy). I watched her throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. Nothing. 

My sister-in-law headed over for the afternoon in anticipation of the birth. We checked on Felicity at around 1:30 and then headed inside for about 10 minutes. On our way back out we heard Felicity holler and went running to the shed and she had just had her first buckling. 

I cut the cord and helped her clean him up a bit. She is a great mom! 

We really thought that he was going to be the only one. He was big and she seemed done. But, about 10 minutes later, Felicity had a couple more contractions and out popped another buckling!

I had heard that vitamin E helped make deliveries easier so I started Felicity on it 5 weeks ago. I don't know if it helped, but she did have such an easy (ok, I don't know if she would say it was easy) delivery, especially compared to the only other one I've seen. All I had to do was cut the cord and help dry the babies.

I seriously love this one's ears! 

#1 buckling:

#2 buckling:

They are doing great! I am going to wait to officially name them until I know if I have a buyer that wants to give them a name. They do already have nicknames. The first one my kids have taken to calling Snuggler. He is calmer and much more interested in snuggling. The second one has earned the name Trouble. He is already an instigator. He tried to get his brother to play with him when they were only 4 hours old and he tried to take on Penny when he was about 18 hours old. Penny, by the way, has been great with them and is a very patient aunt. 

Anyway, our farm name (Hiraeth Farm) will be the first part of their registered names. Our first babies with our own farm name. I feel so official.

I'm sure there will be more picture to come, especially of Trouble as I anticipate him getting into some unusual predicaments. 

*Again, thanks to my SIL for most of these photos. It frees me up to be able to do goat stuff and we still have great photos!

Twins!

Felicity gave birth to 2 little blue-eyed black and white bucklings (boys) this afternoon. They are all doing well. More pics will come, but here are a couple for now.

Thanks to my sister-in-law for her rockin' awesome photography skills.

Due Date

Today is Felicity's due date.

Still no kids on the ground.

It's driving me crazy.

That pretty much sums it up.

Here is a picture from today. It doesn't do her justice, she is much bigger than she looks here. When she lays down it all spreads out and she looks a bit like a whale. Plus she has taken to sitting like a dog. Poor thing. Hopefully the kid(s) decide to come out soon.

Farm Name

I think we have finally landed on a farm name!

Hiraeth Farm

Now we can get it registered with the American Goat Society and all goat kids born to does owned by us will be registered with our farm name. For example, if Felicity has a doeling (girl) one name that is on the possibility list is Hiraeth Farm Pippa. Chances are it won't end be exactly that name for a doeling (though I really like the name Pippa. If we get two we could have a Pippa and a Kate/Catherine ;-), but you get the idea.

Penny is not registered, so her babies will not be included in this. But, we are planning on adding another registered doe, either through purchase or retaining a doeling from Felicity. Our plan is to see how much milk Penny produces to see if it is worth keeping her in the long run. If not we will phase her out and replace her with registered stock. Long term we will probably keep 3-4 does. We are starting small with 2 to see what our family dairy need is. Then add does accordingly.

Really the only reason we are looking at this as an option is because we are able to sell the kids for significantly more if they are registered. It takes the same amount of feed to keep a goat whether or not it is registered, so we might as well have registered stock that we can recoup some of our investment.

Felicity Update: her ligaments are almost gone. Unfortunately they can be "almost gone" for several days or they could disappear this afternoon. I check her about every 3 hours (except at night, I'm so not giving up sleep unless I know she is in labor. Ain't nobody got time for that.)

Soon

Felicity is getting closer to delivering, but not as fast as I anticipated. Last week she changed drastically from one day to the next and I thought for sure we were really close. But then things stayed basically the same. I am a very impatient sanguine and don't wait well. This. Is. Killing. Me. And, her due date isn't even for another week. So she *could* go longer. Oh, dear. Let's hope for my sanity that it is sooner rather than later.

She is getting bigger, but I can't seem to capture that in a photo and her ligaments are going away, but not gone yet. I have noticed that her udder is starting to fill, though it should get a lot fuller.

Do you know how hard it is to get a good picture of a goat udder without including other bits that don't need to be part of a family friendly (mostly) blog?

Today we did the final preparations for the impending kids. The heat lamp is hung in the shed and lookin' all kinds of classy. What, with the orange extension cord running through our back yard and all. It's hung, over what looks like a KKK cross, across the small space between the fence and the chicken coop. Then along the chicken area over to the shed. All in an attempt to get heat to the shed without the chance of the goats eating the power supply. It's classy I tell ya!

I am now closing the goats in in the evening just in case Felicity decides to deliver in the dark of night. I don't want her delivering outside. Even without the heat lamp they should be fine if they are closed up inside the shed. I'm still keeping a close eye on her though because I don't want to miss the big event.

We had the first sign of Spring yesterday. TWO EGGS! Whoo Hoo! That means that we should start getting more and more eggs until each one of the chickens are laying every day. It was definitely a nice surprise to see multiple eggs. We are really missing our own eggs. They taste so much better than anything we can get anywhere else.

Hopefully the next post will be baby pictures!