Triple The Trouble

Annie, our Nubian goat, has had triplets twice before.   She has been growing and growing.  She was so huge that we were sure that she was carrying triplets again.  We have been waiting on her to kid for the last several weeks, every day thinking, "Is this the day?"  Well, Saturday afternoon as I was working in the garden I looked over and heard some grunting.  Annie had given birth to twins!  She was licking them clean - a buckling and a doeling.

Well, I thought, I guess you are not going to have triplets this time, old girl.  Well, I thought wrong.  After a little while, she sat down and promptly gave birth to a third.  My primary job was to stand with a stick and chase off the chickens.  They love to peck at the placenta and at the baby goats' hooves.

It wasn't very long until Annie had them all cleaned up AND had devoured the placenta.  We worked with the babies to ensure that they got to drink the colostrum.  One of Annie's teats was so engorged it almost drug the ground.  After the babies drank, we went ahead and milked it out.  Annie was being very motherly to her offspring.  It is neat how their instinct for caring for their young kicks in.

She has had 9 kids so far!  This time three - two boys and a girl.  Tricia got the kitchen scale to weigh them.  One weighed 5 pounds and the other two weighed 5 and a half.  It was a little difficult to get them to stay still on the scale!

One of the little bucklings has some nice-looking spots.  The other two are mostly black with tan and white markings.

And here is the deadbeat dad - Buckwheat.  He didn't even come check out his kids.  Off in the distance, he just laid in the dust disinterested.  He wasn't interested in helping out with discipline or care of his kids.  I told him that he owes child support, but he just rolled over and looked at me indignantly with his goatee.

While we had the scale out, Tricia walked over and got Salt and Pepper.  They are Oreo's kids and are a month and a few days old.  We weighed them.  Pepper was 9 and a half pounds and Salt was 10 and a quarter.  They are growing!

So we have five babies on the pasture now.  It is quite a zoo we have.  Our plans are to let the kids grow for a bit and then sell them.  We don't have the pasture (or the patience) to keep them all.  They are cute, though!