This week: Kids!

Apologies, I'm a bit late with the weekly update this week because we've been busy scrambling around taking care of momma goats and their newborn kids. Yup, kidding season started with a bang this week! It seems like every time we look outside, there are more newborn kids with a proud mom standing nearby. Not much else exciting happened this week so I'll talk a bit about what this entails for us and the new moms.

Heart and her kid born overnight.

All the births have gone smoothly so far. Since we can't keep a constant eye on all of the goats intervention would be difficult, so it's a good thing we haven't needed to yet. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to intervene after the birth either, but things have not exactly gone perfectly there. Sometimes in domesticated animals, or animals in general, the maternal instinct doesn't always kick in right away (or at all). Luckily we have not had any does completely abandon their babies yet, but we have had to encourage some. If the doe has twins or triplets, they may take responsibility of one and neglect the rest. If the doe is not used to suckling newborns, she may not let the babies underneath her to feed. This is especially true in new moms.

After the babies are born we give the moms enough time to clean them and recover a bit, and then we take them to our kidding barn to protect the babies from the elements and keep the other goats from causing any trouble. If the mom is not taking to a baby or not letting them suckle, we will hold her still while we show the baby where to feed...once the baby and mom get used to it, they begin to click and take over from there. We have only had a bit of trouble so far and most of the moms have done very well taking care of their kids.

The napping corner.

Boer goats can have between 1-3 kids. Having three kids might seem like a blessing, but in reality a doe is only equipped to nurture two kids. Normally all the triplets are a bit smaller than normal, and at least one is even more of a runt. The chances that all three will survive the first day aren't guaranteed. If all three end up strong enough to live then it's in the best interest of the mom to take one away and bottle-feed it. Luckily we have been involved in the local 4H programs and have children who are willing to take a goat and bottle-feed it. Bottle-feeding is very time-consuming and produced very dependent and needy goats who have a very hard time being integrated back in with the herd. Giving the extra kid away to a responsible family is the best case scenario.

So far we have had five moms with two sets of triplets, two twins, and one single kid. We've lost one of the triplet babies, but all other kids and their moms are healthy and thriving. They especially enjoyed the sunny warm day we had today. We expect the kidding to go on for a few more weeks, and we hope the rest are as beautiful and healthy as these first few.

Not much else has been going on around the farm. The winter produce is still recovering from the different setbacks, so we only had chicken and eggs at the market last weekend. Enough has recovered to have a full selection this coming Saturday. The early tomato and pepper seedlings are doing great and growing faster than expected. We may have tomatoes earlier than we had planned, possibly in April. The first batch of Spring crops has also been started, and the last batch of over-wintered seedlings are going in the ground in the next few days. These will tide us over in March going into April. Spring can't come fast enough!