The Kids

I can't believe the kids will be three weeks old tomorrow and I haven't posted any pictures of all of them together. Here are some pictures of them at one week of age: I love this one with Nigel and Sassy. I can just hear them talking, and Perle telling them, "This is good to eat." It's hard to believe they were all born at the same time! Sassy's trying to get her bluff in on Tonka. :-) -and Nigel leaping off the log. You'll never catch me! The mineral dish makes a nice double bed, apparently.

In Like a Lion out like a ... Lion?

Today is our first day back to school after a glorious spring break. Early last week we had highs in the upper 70's. It felt like early summer. This is what I awakened to today:

BABIES!!!

At approximately 7:30 P.M. yesterday (March 10, 2011) Perle delivered one beautiful doeling and two precious bucklings. When I got home from work I knew she was getting close, but then, I've thought she was close for over a week, so I tried not to get my hopes up too much. Here is her final belly pic, taken about two hours before she kidded:

Here she is having a contraction:

I only saw her have one contraction in an hour, and so I thought it could go on for several hours before she actually delivered. I put her on the back porch and started making supper. I'd been inside about thirty minutes when Perle cried out. I turned to Wayne and said, "She doesn't usually do that!" (I've been keeping her separate from the herd when I can't be with her for a few days, and she will talk if she hears me in the pantry, but not like that!) I went scurrying out to her and immediately saw two HIND legs hanging out of her. I jumped over to her and took the legs and tried to soothe her. Thankfully, she had another contraction almost immediately and I was able to pull the kid with it.

It was a doe! :D She took almost no time to get up and around. Wayne says we should name her Spunky.


After about fifteen minutes #2 started to emerge:

With the next contraction she made real progress. If you look closely you can see his perfect presentation with two tiny front hooves and his little nose.

He is HUGE!!! Almost twice as big as his siblings.

Perle wanted to keep licking #1, and I kept trying to get her to work on #2. I really didn't expect her to have another one in there. (Her first two births were twin does.) I was sitting right beside her when she grunted and pushed and out popped another pair of hind legs!!! I grabbed them and pulled with that same first push. #3 slipped right out!

Being born is hard work!

Perle's Belly Pics

Perle assures me she is just as anxious and I am for her babies to be out of there! I have a hard time believing it, though. :) I knew I wanted to get belly pics, but I wanted them to be as big as possible. When things changed rapidly on Sunday I decided it might be now or never. She isn't officially due until March 9th. I sure thought it was going to begin any minute on Sunday! Her ligaments were almost completely gone. I could get my thumb and forefinger within about half an inch of touching where her ligaments are. (That's supposed to mean labor is imminent.) She's still looking pretty much the same today, three days later. She'll probably torture me and be over due!

Here are her teats. I found it odd because last year when I got her her entire udder was pretty dark grey. This year it's quite pink. Maybe this means her capacity is growing and things are stretching out! Her mother's udder size really exploded at her fourth freshening. I'm hoping for that with Perle. (This is her third.) Last year she provided plenty of milk for us to drink and cook with, but no surplus for cheese making, which I REALLY want to get into!

And finally, her WIDE LOAD belly! I feel confident that she is carrying twins. I was sure hoping for quads (she showed a lot early in her pregnancy), but I reckon you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. There is really no predicting what they will have, either. I've known people who were just sure their doe was having multiples and there was one large kid, and other times they didn't hope for many and there were lots of babies! You just never know.

This picture shows her nice udder and how other things are looking quite ready. She wouldn't let me get a closer shot. Each time I tried she would tuck her tail! She's a shy girl...

...but not with her own kind!

2-1-11 Blizzard

Throughout the last week of January meteorologists predicted that we would have snow during the first week of February. Initially it was a chance of snow, then it was nearly certain that there would be snow, and then we went through the progression of winter weather advisory, winter weather warning, winter storm warning, and then, on Monday afternoon, they switched it to a BLIZZARD warning. I had never been in a blizzard in my life! (My daddy argued with me and said I'd been in several blizzards when we lived in Colorado. I was two when we moved from there, and so that does not count!) I was deeply concerned for our animals and how we would cope with such a terrific storm. When I arrived home from work I immediately set to work preparing for the worst. (The weather was still beautiful, though the temperature was dropping.) I cleaned out half of our enclosed back porch, which we use for storage, in case Wayne agreed that it was the best place to put the goats. I made sure the chicken house was as air tight as possible, and I loaded up the goat's manger with hay. Wayne did agree that we needed to move the goats to the back porch, and we proceeded to pack them up and get them moved. We also brought enough food for three days for all the animals into the house, in case we couldn't get to the barn. We put Wayne's dogs on the back porch as well, but in separate quarters. For the goats I lined the floor with several layers of newspapers, and then a good four inch thick layer of hay. We used a sheet of plywood and part of an old bunk bed to contain them. Here are the goats enjoying their snug accommodations:

Even though I had completely covered the newspaper with hay, Miracle just had to pull up the newspapers and chew them up! Thankfully, she got bored with that after the first day or so.
Our back porch is fully enclosed, but obviously not perfectly air tight. I've never thought of it as a drafty place, but check this out:
Note how God graciously left a clearing for us to be able to open the door. How cool is that? He also did it around the chicken house:

See the snow on the window sills as well as Miracle's whiskers? I'm inclined to believe she got the snow on herself by putting her face in the snow that had blown in through the cracks around the windows. None of the other three had snow on them like she did.

Here is how I barricaded them into their half of the porch:

...aaaannnnd! They barricaded ME inside! This was NOT a fun moment. There was a huge boom, and I came running. They had reared up on the sheet of plywood and knocked it over. My screen door opens out, so I couldn't open it.


Here are some pictures of the drifts. There were bare spots in the yard, and there were places where the snow came to my hips, and I'm 5'8".

Note the chairs on our back porch.

The drift in front of the barn had to be at least waist deep. I tried to get through it and fell down and had a really hard time getting up. I decided I didn't need that chain I was going to get after all!

This drift across the back of the house was every bit as deep as the one by the barn. Thankfully, we could walk around it to take care of the chickens.

I'm SO thankful we put the goats on the porch. Here is what the blizzard did to the goat pen:

It would have taken several hours of digging to be able to get into the pen. Their gate opens inward, so I'd have had to dig a path to the pen (remember the waist high drift?) and then climb their fence and dig the snow out from around it. It makes me sick to even think about it now! There was so much snow in there (it was blown in the entire length of the pen) that they could very well have frozen to death! I think our coldest night was -19* actual temperature + the wind chill.
I originally expected the goats to be in the back porch for two or three days. It ended up being 13, and we had to work HARD to get them back outside even then. ALL that snow had to be shoveled out of their pen so that it didn't melt and form shear ice to be slipped upon. Here is the pen all cleaned out with the goats basking in the great outdoors:

And the back porch, pretty well cleaned out. Note the "cleaned" walls. They stripped the backing off that sub-siding stuff. I'm just praying it doesn't cause birth defects!


Wayne caught these deer across the road from our house one morning.