Josie's girls

Up next to kid was Josie.

  Big Onion was away from the farm at a meeting when Josie started with the early signs of labor. Luckily, I had my best and oldest friend, K, visiting at the time. With the CAE positive girls, we try our very best to be there when they deliver and pull the babies before momma even has a chance to lay eyes on them. This seems to make the separation a lot easier on the mother. Trying to do this without a second person is almost impossible. It means I have to make a choice to leave either the mother or the babies alone while running back and forth to the house with slimy, soggy newborns. My poor friend had no idea what she signed up for when she decided to visit the farm, but boy was I grateful for her help!

 That curled tail is a sure sign that a goat is in labor and experiencing contractions.

  After morning chores, I got Josie all set up in the goat room and gathered the towels, feed sacks, my camera, and all the other random things I might need in preparation for the big event. I gave my friend a call and said that if she wanted to witness the miracle of life she should come out soon. Well, Josie surprised us because by the time K got out there I had just finished clearing the airway on a tiny brown doeling with blue eyes and LaMancha ears. I plopped the wet and slimy little thing into K's arm with instruction to bring her up to the house and take Rialey to help with cleanup.

   No sooner had I sent her off when Josie was down and pushing again. A few good pushes and out came another little girl! This one was bigger than the first, and she was marked just like her mother! This is the second time that Josie has reproduced herself in an offspring. This latest doeling was the spitting image of Josie and her daughter, Francesca!

  I bundled this little girl up and ran her up to the house where the first baby was already getting dry and starting to get up on her feet. I handed off baby number two then headed back out to check on momma.

  It took a long time and Josie was up and down a lot. Obviously, she wasn't quite done kidding. She pushed and pushed and finally something started to emerge. One look at this baby before she was even totally born and I knew something wasn't right. The head was misshapen somehow, but it wasn't until Josie gave a couple more good pushes and the little thing came into the world that I got a good look.

  It was a little doeling with a light brown head and all white body. My first step when receiving a kid is to clear the nose and mouth. This baby had no nose. It was just...missing. I did my best to clear her airway and to my surprise she gave a pretty strong cry. I bundled her up and headed back to the house. By the time I got inside Big Onion had arrived home, and I had already started spewing a stream of expletives to make a sailor blush.

  K and Big Onion and I all gathered round to look at the newest kid. It became evident very quickly that her misshapen face wasn't the only thing wrong with this little girl. She could not seem to hold her head up properly and never really made an attempt to get on her feet. Despite being dried off, snuggled between her two sisters, and laying near a space heater, she felt cold.

  We decided that the little one probably was not long for this world and with her deformities and obvious mental disabilities we made the hard decision that it was probably best not to intervene. We kept her warm and comfortable, but did not try to feed her. We decided to call the little one Martha because even though she wasn't going to be with us long, she still deserved a name in this world.

  While her sisters got up and learned to walk and then hop, to take a bottle and even to try to headbutt the older kids, little Martha just laid there. Within a couple hours of her birth she was gone. It was peaceful but very sad. It seemed crazy to me that she would make it though 5 months of gestation, through labor and birth, only to die a few hours later.

  Once she was gone, we got a closer look at her head and realized that she had a clefted palate that connected up with her sinuses. If we had even tried to feed her she would most likely have aspirated and died gasping for air. In retrospect, our decision not to intervene had been the right one.

  In the meantime, we had two vibrant, healthy, active doelings to contend with. I gave my friend, who had spend the last few years living and working in Qatar, the honor of naming the two girls. She decided the first girl should be called Dara, Arabic for the orange of the sun at sunset. The second girl, who was colored like Josie, had a sweet little heart shaped spot on her back. Her name became Galbi, Arabic for heart.

 The jar of colostrum that I had so carefully collected then froze from the CAE negative girls broke while we were trying to thaw and reheat it, inspiring a whole new spate of colorful language from me. Little Dara then refused to nurse from the bottle just like Georgie before her. We ended up tube feeding her for just a day before she figured out that suckling was way nicer that having a tube shoved down your throat several times a day.

  Dara turned out to be very sweet. She was the smallest of the bottle kids we raised, but made up for it by consuming large quantities of milk and making the cutest little angry baby noises when the bottle wasn't flowing fast enough.

  Galbi is a total spirtfire just like her momma. She amazed us by trying to push around Frankie and Georgie within a few hours of being born! She kept trying to get up on a small box we'd placed in with the babies to play on, banging her head into anyone who tried to joint her, then falling over when her still wobbly baby legs would give out under her!

That just left Thea, our big white Saanen girl, as the last to kid.

Turnip's Tumultuous Arrival

  We had been up and down all night bottle and tube feeding Gwen's newborn kids, and I volunteered to get up early and start morning chores while Big Onion tried to catch a couple extra Zzz's on the couch. Since he had just built us a new milking system (yay!), Big Onion said he would follow me out in a little while to show me how it works.

  When I opened the back door, I heard goats calling. Now this is not all that uncommon around here since Francesca is THE most vocal goat known to man, but today her usual yelling was accompanied by other voices. As I was getting close to the poultry house, I looked over to see Eve nibbling at something on the ground. It took a few minutes for my sleep deprived brain to process that she was nibbling at an afterbirth and that afterbirth meant that she had probably just kidded....but where was the kid?

  Now Eve is a weird and goofy goat. I had visions of her giving birth, taking one looks at that kid and being freaked out by what just fell out of her backside and running away! I feared I'd find a little cold, dead baby goat left in the field somewhere. About that time, I heard a goat calling again only this time I was sure it wasn't Francesca.

  I walked around the corner to find Josie standing there with a little blonde, blue eyed baby pinned to the fence behind her. Josie was calling to the baby over and over again in hopes of claiming it as her own. Josie had stolen Eve's baby!

  I had a moment of panic while I tried to figure out how to catch a wild eyed, half crazed, very, very pregnant Josie without her trampling or crushing the baby that was sandwiched between her massive body and the fence. I had to get that baby reunited with her actual mom as soon as possible or there was a chance that they wouldn't bond, and we would have yet another bottle baby in the house. Thankfully, we had taped up Josie's teats so there was no chance the baby could have nursed from her and potentially contracted CAE. I put in a quick call to a half groggy Big Onion yelling something along the lines of, "All hell's broken loose! Get out there NOW!"

  Josie isn't the easiest goat to get your hands on in the best of times so I started talking to her very softly and walking slowly toward her. All the while she was calling away, "I'll show you! You ain't stealing this baby from me because I stole her first!" When I got within range, I swiftly grabbed her collar and pulled her away from the baby and the fence. I dragged her across the yard and into the milk room and quickly slammed and locked the door.

  Meanwhile, that poor baby was calling and calling, and I think Eve finally figured out that she was missing something and started yelling back to her kid. Gwen having just kidded and never to be outdone, started calling too and then the two teenaged kids, Francesca and Lucia, decided to chime in for good measure.

  Somehow in all that cacophony, I got mother and baby together and closed them into the goat room. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Eve immediately start grooming her kid and the little girl start nosing around for mom's udder. My relief was short lived though when I realized that behind me one very pissed off Josie was doing her best to headbutt her way through the milk room door.

  She was still yelling her fool head off and the confused little doeling was calling back not sure who she should answer to. Hearing her mother so upset, Gwen started calling even louder! In an effort to calm everyone down, I waiting until Josie was in between bashes and unlocked and flung the milk room door open. I grabbed Josie by the collar and dragged her out, across the first pasture, and locked her behind the gate to the bridge. I came back, grabbed Gwen, and locked her behind the gate with her mother. They could still call, but at least Josie wouldn't be doing her best to demolish our out buildings!

  When I finally made it back to check on mother and daughter, the little one was happily nursing away like nothing had happened! What a resilient little girl! It was about that time that Big Onion finally made his arrival on the scene totally missing all the action!

  We decided to call Eve's little girl Turnip, and I have to say that despite her having a very dramatic entry into this world, that little girl probably has the best temperament of any of the kids we've had this year.

  She is sweet, silly, bold, and inquisitive. She drives her mother crazy with her independence and lack of fear. Of all our kids, even the bottle babies, she is the one who seems to enjoy human attention the most. She will seek us out and get our attention by nibbling on our clothes or pawing at our legs. She loves nothing more than to be picked up and snuggled and to have her cheeks and neck scratched. Her wonderful attitude reminds me so much of her grandmother Gertie who we lost not that long ago. Of all the kids, she will be the hardest to sell, and Big Onion and I have already started talking about maybe keeping the sweet little thing around to take her grandma's place.

I Didn't Know I was Pregnant: Barnyard Edition

 For the last couple months we had been watching Josie get bigger and bigger. Big Onion kept telling me he thought she was pregnant, but since we had neutered Luciano and the likelihood of a geep/shoat (that's a sheep/goat hybrid) is slim to none, I was sure she was just getting fat.

  Well, last Monday evening I happened to see her walking by with a sharp lump sticking out of her right side. I'd seen that before. It was the shape of a tiny goat hoof pressing out from the inside. I grabbed her by the collar and started feeling around. Sure enough. There was at least one little creature inside our lady goat. Crap.

  We got Josie on the milk stand and gave her a better look. Her udder (which always looks kind of full) was filling up more than normal and the ligaments above her tail were just starting to soften up. Not only was Josie pregnant, but she was due very, very soon!

  Since Josie is CAE+, we had planned on not breeding her again. In order for her not to pass the potentially deadly virus on to her offspring, we would have to be there when the kids were born to keep them from nursing directly from her. Big Onion left work early Tuesday and planned on taking off Wednesday to keep an eye on Josie. He has never attended the birth of any of our goats, but we were both pretty confident in his abilities to handle the situation

  Tuesday nothing really happened. Josie's udder got bigger and her ligaments got softer. She was laying down a little more than normal. Big Onion checked on her every few hours through the day and night. Wednesday I had to work so I had packed up my things and was headed out the door keys in hand when I got a message on my phone from Big Onion who was already out and checking on momma once again. It said, "She's laying down...now up...down again and pushing! Go time!"

  I sighed, texted my coworker that I would be late, and headed out to the goat yard. When I walked in the room, Big Onion said, "Oh thank god!" I think he was little nervous about handling things on his own.

  We watched Josie get up, lay down, push, mumble to herself, push some more. It seemed to take forever. About 40 minutes after her first push, we started started to see the bubble of the amniotic sac starting to emerge. Big Onion helped to break the sac, and it wasn't long before we caught a glimpse of a tiny white foot emerging then going back in with Josie's every push. After a few times of this, I told Big Onion to grab hold of the foot and don't let go!

  Little did he know just how slippery unborn baby goats can be! It took a few tries, but he finally got a grip on the one foot and gently pulled while Josie pushed. Within a few seconds we realized what what wrong. Josie was giving birth to a kid with a head the size of a softball! It took some pulling on our part and some serious protesting on hers, but eventually the slimy little linebacker of a goat popped  out of her mother's backside.

  I hardly had time to blink and Big Onion had that kid wrapped up in a towel and spirited out of the room. We've found that if you have to take a kid from a momma goat, it's best not to let her even lay eyes on it. The less time she has to bond, the less she will mourn for the lost babies. This is one of the many heartbreaking aspects of CAE. There is nothing we would love more than to let mother and baby stay together, but letting that baby nurse from its mother puts it at seriously risk of developing and dying from encephalitis at 2-4 months of age. That is not a risk we are willing to take.

   While Big Onion was off drying off the baby, I stayed with Josie and started cleaning up. After seeing the size of that kid, I was pretty certain that Josie was only going to have the one. I was just starting to help Josie clean up her back end when she started pushing again. It is normal for the mother to have contractions to help her pass the afterbirth so I didn't think much of it...until I saw another intact bubble starting to emerge. I guess the way was cleared by that first behemoth of a kid because this second one all but flew out! Luckily I was there to catch it with another towel and had it out of the room lickity split!

  I found Big Onion and Rialey in the poultry house still cleaning and drying the first baby. He told me his was a girl! I plopped my slimy, wet bundle in front of Rialey for cleaning, took a quick peek to find out she was a girl too! Then I headed back to spend time with Josie. I think it's important that the doe not be left alone that this time. I sat close to her and quietly let her lick my hands and arms clean.

  Once the babies were relatively clean, Big Onion headed to the house to prepare a bottle of powered colostrum and get the new little girls fed. I waitws for Josie to recover enough to get back up on her feet. With a little encouragement I got her up on the milk stand and milked out that all important first milk for the newborns.

  In order for it to be safe for the babies, CAE positive colostrum has to be heat treated. It needs to be carefully raised to 135 degrees and held there for one hour. We keep powdered colostrum on hand so that the babies don't have to wait for over an hour for their first meal. We learned last year that hungry newborns can stir up quite a ruckus. When I got back up to the house, both babies were clean, dry and snoozing with full bellies.

  I handed off Josie's colostrum and gave my work clothes a once over. Miraculously, I had managed to keep my clothes clean through the whole messy process. I once again grabbed my bags and my keys and headed out the door leaving the twin doelings in Big Onion's more than capable hands.

Thanks Josie

This is why we need a double layer of fencing on all of the rabbit tractors. Thanks, Josie.

Copper wire particles and our goats: Take 2

  It has been about 6 months since we gave all the goats a dose of copper wire particles, so we decided it was about time to treat them again. If you'll recall, last time didn't go so smoothly. This time I was going out by myself, but I was determined to make things go as smoothly as possible this time.

  We had purchased the large cow sized pills of copper to save money. I started by weighing out the copper and packing it into small gelatin capsules. This was easy to do with the help of a tiny plastic funnel on which I had widened the end slightly.
 
 The normal dosage for copper wire particles for goats is 2 grams for young or mini goats and 4 grams for adults. We decided to split the difference for Gwen and Eve and give them 3 grams each since they are both somewhere in between (around 50-60lbs).

  The secret to my success this time was supposed to be this. It's called a "pet piller," and it works great for cats and dogs. I have even been using it with Gwen on a regular basis with no problem. I was soon to learn that not all our goats are as easy to handle as our Gwen.

Josie being Josie

  Every morning and evening when we milk the goat ladies, we give them a mixture of grains and alfalfa hay. Aside from being very good for milk production, the hay helps slow them down so they don't finish eating before we finish milking and get all impatient and stompy. Well, I guess this morning Josie was just not in the mood for alfalfa. I was in the middle of milking her when I heard a noise and saw something fly over my left shoulder! 

 Yep. That's the feed bucket. Josie, being the delightful ray of sunshine that she always is, decided I had too dang much alfalfa in her bucket. She picked it up and tossed it across the milk room showering the milk stand, me, and Luna (who had to duck to narrowly avoid getting beaned by the bucket!) in little green bits of hay and feed.

  For her efforts, Josie got to stand there with no feed for the rest of the milking. I may be an unrepentant goat snuggler most of the time, but I'm not going to put up with lady goat hissy fits that early in the morning! 

Kid Watch 2013: Update - Still kidless!

  Josie started this afternoon with that I thought was labor. She was breathing heavy, looked very uncomfortable, and stretching a lot. That was about 12 hours ago. Well, since then I must have walked a total of miles and miles from the house to the goat rooms checking on her every couple hours.

  We are also running up on Thea's due date now and neither girl seems to be ready to get down to business. When I last check on them, Josie was downing hay like it was going out of style, and Thea was sleeping peacefully in the milk room.

  I just wish they'd get on with it already before I become too sleep deprived and delirious to deal with delivering and caring for two to god knows how many kids!

Kid watch 2013

Josie is due any minute now so we are officially on kid watch.

As you can see, she is roughly the size of a small aircraft carrier with a very full looking udder.

She is really waddling around these days, but being hugely pregnant in this blistering heat hasn't changed her temperament one bit. She's still full to the brim with piss and vinegar, and that's the way we love her.

Our Thea should be due just a few days after Josie.

As you can see, she is not carrying nearly as wide as Josie. Her gut is hanging low instead. If I didn't know this girl's normal shape or hadn't had her tested, I'd be wondering if she was pregnant at all. 

Both our mommas to be are still out grazing in the hot sun like nothing unusual is happening. Meanwhile, we've been checking udders and goat rears several times a day for any indication of impending kid-hood.

  Since both the girls are CAE+, we plan on pulling and bottle raising babies. We just got a negative CAE test back for Gertie, and we have a freezer full of her milk ready and waiting. Today I taped up both girls' teat just in case they decided to go all ninja and kid on us without any warning.

  Before I taped Josie, I milked out her udder in hopes of keeping her from getting congested like she did with Gwen. I was also hoping to get some colostrum from her that we could heat treat and have ready for when the little ones arrive. Unfortunaly, what I got was white and salty. I guess the real colostrum doesn't come until momma is really ready to kid.

  The next few night will be very short on sleep as we will be checking on the girls every few hours and keeping our fingers crossed that we will be there with the catcher's mitt ready when they  decide to kid.

Sick Josie

  I just recently posted about how our Josie is getting very large with her pregnancy, and I want to talk about her again. The beginning of this week we had a major scare with the poor girl.

  It was Monday morning, my normal day off work, and I was out doing my chores when Gwen walked up to me asking for her breakfast. I noticed that there was something on her side. It looked kind of green and dry and crusty. I didn't think much of and went about letting out ducks and bringing feed to rabbits when I noticed Josie laying in the field. Now this is not unusual. The goats tend to laze around until they hear me open their feed bin for breakfast in the morning. What was unusual was that Josie's normally white beard looked kind of...green.

  The day before, Big Onion and I spent most of the day cutting, de-stemming, coring, grinding, and juicing all those ground fallen pears from the tree in the back yard. So that morning, I brought out all the pear cores, stems, and ground leavings for all the animals to enjoy. I offered a small handful of ground pear to Josie. Normally, she loves the pears and will scarf down any she can get her mouth on. This morning, she gave it one sniff and backed away quickly. Totally not interested.

  I shrugged and went about my day, resolving to check on her again that afternoon. Well, by the time I got back to checking on Josie again, she was looking really bad. It was now clear why Gwen was speckled with crust, and Josie had a green beard. Josie had apparently been vomiting since the night before. Now goats don't exactly vomit, not like we do. It's more like they bring their cud up into their mouths then open up and sling to glop all over the place. Trust me when I say that you do not want to be in the splash zone of a sick goat.

  That afternoon Josie had covered herself in her own sick. She was hugely pregnant, slinging cud everywhere, grinding her teeth, squatting frequently, and making these terrible little distressed goat sounds.

  I tried giving her baking soda and some cooking oil in case she was bloating. Both things seemed to make her feel worse. We were especially worried because she was so pregnant and seemed to be feeling really, really terrible. I finally called my wonderful local, large animal vet. After talking to him for a few minutes, we came to the conclusion that Josie had probably eaten too many ground fallen pears the night before and since she was so pregnant, the fermentation of the sweet fruit in her already compressed gut was making her sick. He suggested I give her a shot of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory, to help relieve some of the pain and bring her in the next morning for fluids if she hadn't improved.

   The shot seemed to help a little. Within an hour she was nibbling on some grass in the pasture and resting in the shade. That night she wasn't at all interested in eating dinner which was fine since the vet said no grains until she was feeling better, but she seemed to be feeling just ok.

  Late in the evening, I went back out to check on her and as I walked out, I heard Rocky, our buck, calling and calling. He took one look at me and ran back to where Josie was standing in the corner of the goat room. I guess he was worried about his favorite lady. Josie was back to grinding her teeth, vomiting, and making those heartbreaking little sounds. I gave her another dose of Banamine and a mouthful of Pepto bismol. I texted my boss and coworkers and said that if my goat wasn't better by morning, I was going to take her to the local vet. My boss (who is a homeopathic vet, but primarily treats small animals) texted back suggesting that I give Josie a dose of the homeopathic remedy Sepia.

   Now I don't know if it was the remedy, the pepto, or the second dose of Banamine, but by the next morning Josie was just about back to her old self. She met me at the back gate begging for breakfast. I gave her a small handful of alfalfa hay and a good grooming to clean all the sick off her coat. She had somehow gotten her cud on the BACK of her horns. Amazing.

  By that evening, it was like nothing ever happened. She was back to beating up the other goats and waddling around the pastures like the queen of the barnyard that she is. She only has about two and half weeks until she is due and already her udder is filling with milk. We'll be on kid watch very soon and until then, you can bet I'll be picking up any extra pears that come within reach of the goats.

Josie the House

This is a picture of Josie about a week before she gave birth to Gwen last year.

Here is Josie now. 

This picture was taken about 5 weeks before her due date. Poor girl is wadding around like a duck. Despite the fact that she is a big as a house, she is always the first in for dinner. Last night she even ran/waddled all the way across the field for dinner, her belly swinging back and forth, short legs flying out to the sides for balance. Poor girl looks like she's smuggling a couple of watermelons!

Pear-ing down

 We looked out the window to find that our pear tree in the backyard partially fell victim to a nasty storm we had yesterday.

 For a while now we've been keeping an eye on our overambitious pear tree.

 As you can see, it is so over burdened with fruit that the poor thing looks like it's doing it's best impression of a willow.

 I ended up pulling several broken branches out of the limbs of the tree. The goats were more than happy to assist with cleanup.

 I harvested as many of the immature pears as I could in the hopes that Big Onion will work his magic and somehow turn them into something drinkable and intoxicating.

 Josie and the other goats also enjoyed some of the pears I missed.

More please!

This picture cracks me up. Notice Gwen and her mother are both resting their chins on the fence in hopes of begging a few more branches out of me. It always surprises us how much Gwen's personality and actions are just like those of her mother, especially when you consider that Josie had absolutely nothing to do with raising the little goat. 

Don't Fear the Reaper

This is how we mow the backyard these days - with a scythe and a rake (not sure how the gas can got there).

Since, we will soon be getting a real live riding mower, Big Onion and I have been putting off cutting the lawn. It got a little...overgrown. Instead of wasting all that perfectly good goat food, I hauled out my christmas present to myself and got to swinging. It's hard, hot work but extremely satisfying. I even managed to cut my hand on the blade while showing Big Onion how NOT to sharpen it. It's tasted first blood! That can't be good.

As usual, Josie was less than impressed with our efforts. 

Thanks to Ohiofarmgirl for the inspiration to invest in my own reaper's blade and make our own hay for earless goats!