More new babies!

Wow, it's been quite the weekend with goat birthing around here. :) On Thursday I noticed that one of my Boer girls, who I didn't expect to kid until the 17th, having a lot of weird discharge. It really looked like she was going into labor, however no contractions or anything. So on Thursday night I decided to go in and check to see if her cervix was open, and just make sure there wasn't a incorrectly presented kid in there. Cervix was totally closed, no evidence of labor other than the discharge. I was really thinking that something was probably going to be wrong, a dead kid or something. Finally on Friday afternoon she started contracting. I checked again and her cervix was opened about the size of a half dollar and I could feel two hooves just past that. About 30 minutes later she started pushing hard and presented the two feet. She wasn't progressing beyond that though, so I pulled gently....still nothing. That kid was just STUCK, poor goat she was pushing as hard as she could and I was at the other end pulling as hard as I could, by this time I figured that the kid was probably for sure dead, but I had to get it out of there. Finally it popped out, and it was alive!! However it was thrashing around unable to breath, as she had aspirated a ton of fluid into her lungs. So I picked her up by the back legs and started swinging her around and patting on her back and ribcage to get the fluid out. Mom was like "Besh are you SURE that's what you should be doing??" I guess it did look a bit drastic but that's what it takes sometimes to get that fluid out. It took a good five minutes of working on her before she was able to breath easily. Whew...that was scary. Her poor little head was quite swollen, probably from being in there so long and the hard pull. She was really tiny, but seemed to be doing okay trying to stand up. However because of the swelling I couldn't get her to nurse or take a bottle, so I tube fed her a couple ounces of colostrum. Later that evening I got her to nurse off the bottle, and the the next morning she was nursing off of her mom.

So for now she seems to be making it okay, walking around fine on her own and nursing. However I am watching her closely for aspiration puemonia. Hopefully she's going to be fine though, such a cute little thing!

The doe did have second kid, which was dead. I really expected that though, because of her going into labor early, and everything just wasn't normal. I was a bit concerned about her passing the placenta, and she ended up having to have several shots of oxytocin, to get her to finish cleaning out.

And then on Saturday, another Boer doe kidded, she did just fine, and had them all by herself. A boy and a girl, I need to get Anna to take some pictures of them, they are so cute, and the little girl has one white and one brown ear.

Oh and my CA doe kid flew in on Tuesday!! She's just gorgeous!! I still need to get pictures of her sometime soon too. Her name is "Hot To Trot." And....the other news is it looks like Lord willing I'm going to be getting a new Nubian buckling as well. Kind of a last minute decision but I really want to be able to breed my kids from this year in the fall, and the only Nubian buck I have right now is the sire to them all. I'm really excited, his dam and sire are VERY nice. He'll be coming from Minnesota, the same breeder that I got Main Attraction, and Elegance from last spring.

Sooo, anybody tired of hearing about goats?? :D My first dairy show is coming up soon too....can't wait to see how Shardae does as a milker now!

Anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on lately, besides some other adventures involving me falling in the pond....maybe I'll post about that sometime.