Kidding!

Really. It's kidding season, but we have about ten pregnant goats. Today, two kidded. Last night, one died while kidding. One also (about two weeks ago) aborted its kids (213).

But tonight, we have five nannies in stalls - two stalls for those who kidded today (at around 10 and then again about 1pm, when we were out trying to return the cage that we had for the dog. Oops.. that was something else, too. Our new dog, Brisket, is entirely too wild to capture by hand.)

Wait. The goats. And why we have five stalls occupied at the moment. Two goats kidded (32 and 17). Thirty-two is a brand new mom and didn't quite GET how to clean its kid up and allow it to feed. Seventeen had her kids first, in the woods, and without notice. Hell, she wasn't even in the running for 'first to kid'. But she did, nonetheless. Had twins. The second one we thought she was going to just leave in the woods, so we had to show it the teat and allow it to feed -- after we dragged 17 and her kids into a birthing stall so they'd be safe from predators. Our dog, Brisket, probably ate the first afterbirth, but we don't know. He was licking his lips, though, when we went out to get the feed dish, scoop and water bowl that we'd left for 17.

So 32 kidded while we were out getting hay, but had no idea how to actually clean her kid off. And frankly, I think she was a little put off at first that it actually wanted to feed from her udder. I think it's all cool, now, so we don't have any bottle babies... yet.

So 12, one of our finest and smartest goats, is putting out major signs and we put her away today.. she may have her kids tomorrow or even late in the evening tonight.

Blank was just acting strange and doing what we thought was a first 'push', so we also put her into a birthing stall of her own. I think she appreciates the solitude.

And then there's 215 - Mike saw white goop coming out of her hiney and we put her into a birthing stall, as well.

This comes at the end of a day of canning 10 cans of chicken stock, putting wire on a stall just in case we had some that were birthing (oh, gee... just in time). And doing a million other things in the day, as usual.

But then there's Brisket. Yesterday, we set the trap that Mike got from the Bastrop Animal Control people a few days ago. We did capture poor Brisket and Mike was late this morning, but dropped the dog off at the vet -- I was following behind and had the day off... We thought Brisket would have to be anesthetized so that the vet could work on him, but that wasn't the case. We got him back around noon today - yes, you guessed it... just in time for kidding season to really get going. Brisket seems slightly less timid of us -- probably because now he knows that there are a lot crueler people out there that want to stick him with needles (vaccinations) and such. The collar came off and he's happily eating. Poor pooch. We just torture him so...

Tired. That's it for now.