April 9th showed that Rejoice and Gloria would be giving birth that day. Rejoice acted a lot closer, "pretending" to push, then getting up and going out to eat. Finally, I thought "this is it"!
But, again she waited and decided that she didn't like the idea of having babies. So, I headed into the house and watched her from the windows. She began pushing almost immediately in real earnest. I waited though for a while, as I didn't want her to change her mind again. When I did go back out, two feet and a nose were showing, but the baby was just not coming. I pulled and pulled and pulled. Still nothing was happening. I began to wonder if two kids were coming at once and I was pulling on two different legs instead. I tried to find where the legs connected and see if I could if it was one or two babies there. I decided that it was the same baby and pulled very hard on both legs. Finally the head slipped out and out came this MONSTER baby!!!!!! He was a buckling of course. Then about 30 seconds after he was born, two more feet again presented. I stood up to catch it, but the baby was too fast for me!!! It was a girl. She is big, but a much more manageble size. :)
The girl is standing up, the boy is laying down.
I had to leave in an hour to pick up my new buckling. My buck was getting too intertwined in my lines, so I needed a new one. Gloria was eating, but beginning to act much closer. I wasn't sure if she would wait for my return or not.
Linda had 6 bucklings for me to choose from and 3 doelings. One of her goats had given birth that day to quads!! I looked all the babies over carefully and finally decided on a girl from the quad batch and a boy from the Dam who produced the most.
Here is the buckling.
Here is my doeling.
When we got back home, I hurried over to where Gloria stood------there was a dear beautiful BIG buckling standing next to here. Gloria is a pretty small goat and when she was pregnant and I would feel for babies, there was "baby" all over in her belly. This boy is a big one. Not quite as big as Rejoice's, but big nevertheless.
I thought that I was done for a week, hadn't I just added 5 babies to my herd in one day? But, Hazal began acting really strange two days later. I thought something was wrong with her as she didn't eat or drink anything. I was getting a little worried. The next morning, she still wasn't eating or drinking. Her ligiments were still there, her udder was tight, but there wasn't much milk in there, and she wasn't due for at least 3 more days. I left with Grandma and Mom to pick up some medicine for her and when I got back, changed and headed out to give her the medicine. I noticed that there were some brown shapes over near here and when I got up to her, there were 3 babies. One still had a the sac over his nose, so I reached down and pulled it off right away. It was too late, he had died. The other two kids were doing okay. There was 2 boys and 1 girl in that batch. The boy that died was solid brown. I find it really interesting that she had three. She is deep, but I thought that there was room for one normal sized one or 2 small ones. Not three!! 'Course the girl only weighed 4.8 pounds and the boys weren't much bigger!! The surviving ones are doing really well. In 3 days, I have added 7 babies to my herd!!!
Only one more goat to go, and she is looking really close herself!! Quite busy to say the least!!
