Well I'm finally taking the time to sit down and recap all the stories I mentioned in the post below...might be old news to some people but if you haven't heard it before hopefully you'll find it interesting! So lets rewind back to mid February about a week after Main Attraction kidded. My two girls that I didn't have the due dates for both decided to kid when I wasn't around, which is kind of nice sometimes as long as they don't have any problems, Reba had a single doe kid, Anna told me it was a buck and I totally believed her until I went up there and checked for myself! :D Nope a doe! Hosanna's doe Wenneveria kidded with a single buckling, he's a really cute little guy! Both of those were "accidentally" sired by my Nubian buck. :(
My friend Danielle and her brother Jordan drove down from IL on the weekend of the 12th to spend a few days with us, which happened to be the weekend that I had several does due. :) So sure enough Sunday night one of my Boer does (Sapphire) went into labor, this doe has had a really weird time with kidding, the first year having a stillborn, then didn't get bred the second year and this was her last chance before she went to live somewhere else. So with her track record of nothing but problems I was definitely keeping a close eye on her, her labor was pretty slow, she just wasn't getting down to business very quick, so after a couple hours I decided to give her a shot of calcium to help with muscle tone and maybe speed things up a bit. Did that and finally she started doing some hard pushing, I checked to make sure the kid was presented correctly (can avoid a lot of problems with just a quick check) and ugh 3 hooves instead of two, after feeling around a bit I realized we had two front hooves coming out correctly and then a second kid's hind leg trying to come out at the same time. So I went ahead and pushed the second kid back out of the birth canal and pulled the correctly presented one forward, a few more pushes and it was out, a beautiful little girl! Number two came out breech as expected and was a buckling, both were nice sized very strong little kiddo's. I'm so glad I gave Sapphire another chance!! :)
Monday comes around and doing chores I check on two Nubians that were due anytime and went and told Danielle, "looks like we're gonna have more babies today!" Maggie kidded a couple hours later with twins, a buck and a doe, the doe is sooo cute!! Later on that afternoon the other doe started labor, she's one of my girls I got from MN almost two years ago, this was her first time to have kids. Once she started pushing hard with no progress I was getting concerned, so I had Andrew hold her while I went in and checked, it was hard to figure out what I was feeling in there, but finally I was able to bring one leg and a head forward and the first little buckling was born. Deep breath, I was sure she would be fine now as usually once the first one is born the other ones just slide right on out. Well it didn't happen, she started pushing again and once again...nothing. Okay another check and wow...was I ever confused, I was feeling front legs, back legs, spine, but couldn't find a head anywhere, I fished for a while but then getting really concerned about my doe and the fact that I couldn't get the tangle straightened out I figured I'd better go ahead and take her in to my vet. So Andrew and I loaded her up in the van...yikes not the best thing but gotta do what you gotta do! Once we got there one of the vet assistants came out and shocked me by picking her up (she was a pretty good sized girl!) and carrying her right in through the front door. It just so happened to be a very busy time at the vet so just imagine this, a guy comes through the door carrying a huge doe who is kinda messy on the rear end and dripping birth fluid all the way down the hallway to the operating table! :D Everybody was stepping back like wow this is a little different!! He barely made it to the table with her, lol with out dropping her that is and the vet came in and got started, I must say we drew quite the crowd! I was helping hold her as well as about 3 other vet assistants and we had a whole group of people in the doorway watching, was pretty interesting! The vet went in, and after feeling around for a bit made the comment "wow I'm not surprised you couldn't get this figured out" it took him a while but finally he pulled out another one breech...ahh now I know why I couldn't find a head! It was ANOTHER buckling, he went in again to check and sure enough there was a third one in there, also breech which both breech and tangled together was why I couldn't get things sorted out on my own, and this time it was a doe! We got home just barely in time to get the kids fed and for me to jump in the shower before Mom's big valentines party she had. Quite the day. I was a bit concerned about the second buckling as he was having some issues with his rear legs from the hard pull and couldn't stand. But he seemed to be doing okay at their last feeding that evening. The next morning when I go out there he was definitely not okay, laying on his side with his head curled over and he was so cold, I was just about sure he wasn't going to make it. :( I hurried inside with him and Andrew and I got to work trying to get him warmed up, we filled up the sink with very warm water, put the kid in a trash bag with just his head sticking out to keep him dry and into the water he went. It wasn't looking too good for a while, he was so cold his temperature wouldn't even register on my thermometer, and once I finally did get him warm enough for it to read it was still way low like 95 *F when normal goat temp should be 101*F-103*F. We worked on him for about an hour and a half and before you knew it the little guy was standing up on his own! Wow! His temperature went right back up to 102, and he took a bottle. I couldn't believe it! We kept him inside for a couple of days and splinted his back legs so he could walk. Once he was stronger a couple days later we took him back outside and took the splints off and that little guy was walking around just fine! He's such a cute little thing you would never know that he went through all of that now.
Sooo that's all the goat adventures, and now for my injuries from Elijah's mad momma cows. :D Usually whenever they have their calves he'll put the mom and her baby in an area of the barn for a few days so they can bond and especially if it's really cold outside. Problem is it greatly complicates my goat chores because I'm like climbing all around temporary fences he puts up and it blocks the stall where my alfalfa hay is. When the first cow calved he had her in the barn and one day I was up there and noticed the big heavy duty panel he had across the "barn aisle" keeping her from coming into my milking area was about to fall down, so not wanting that to happen I decided to pick up one end of the panel from the other side and try to move it to where it was more secure, so I pick it up and start pushing it when suddenly the cow jumps and butts the panel from the other side smashing it into my head, OUCH! Very painful...so I decided it was probably not a good idea to mess with that anymore. :)
Adventure number 2, second cow calves and we're in the same scenario, but this time I was crawling over about 5 fences to get to my alfalfa hay and them climbing back over all of them with an arm load of hay, doing my best to stay totally on the other side of the fence from the cow. Well right at the very end I had one place that I put one leg over on the cows side of the fence right before I get to safety. So I put my leg over and *smash* the cow starts ramming my leg with her head, I lost my balance and my body fell back over the fence (not on the cows side thankfully!) but my leg stayed hooked up on the fence with the cow still smashing it. Not a good situation to be in. Finally she backed off and I extracted myself from the dangling position I was in, and just stood there for a while with a lot of pain shooting through my leg. Wow..I can't believe I did that! Once the pain subsided a bit I limped through the rest of my chores and headed back to the house. But wow did I ever have some major bruises that are only just now about gone. I was just thankful nothing was broken, definitely could have been worse!
Sooo is farm life interesting or what?? :D Now I'm waiting on my pretty Shardae to kid, she is totally huge, so I'm guessing triplets again, sure would be nice if she has some girls in there! :)
I don't have really many new pictures...need to get Anna to take some, but the one at the top is Maggie's lil kid, she's so cute!
