Almost Done

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind!  We have had our fastest kidding season ever this spring, with all but one of 27 goats done already, starting from the 29th of March.  We have 43 babies (I believe), with only 2 lost so far - one who apparently breathed fluid during birth and never recovered, and a second who I think was sat on fatally, probably by a pregnant sheep - poor guy just didn't stand a chance against that :(. 

We've had more single kids than usual this year, and also less triplets, only one set, but we have virtually the same number of babies as the last two years, when we've had more born. The lower rate of triplets is sort of coincidentally deliberate.  As I track all the mamas and their babies, we end up culling ones that don't raise all the kids they birth, and that is more likely with triplets, for various reasons.  We sold several of our regular triplers last year, and the only one we had this year is testament to conscientious record-keeping.  She was a triplet herself, her mother always had 3 healthy babies, and I was not surprised when she followed suit and, for her first time kidding, had 3 sturdy little girls (and in a boy-heavy year!) all equally sized, just like her mom always did.  

In these 2+ weeks, we've also had 9 lambs from the 5 sheep, without a single loss - a much better year than last year, with 2 lambs from the 4 potential mothers.  Most of them came in boy-girl pairs, except for one boy-boy set and the single girl.  

I have settled into milking the two goats I milked last year, and (more importantly) they have settled into being milked like they never left off.  Milking the sheep has been less peaceful!  The older Tunis, Chestnut, is pretty tame and within 2 days figured out that it she hops up on the stand, she gets to eat while that lady does whatever she wants to, and who cares, there's food.  Juniper, the Friesian (the actual milking breed sheep!) is incredibly wild.  After a week of milking the others with her in the pen, she now approaches when I'm on the second goat or so, to nibble out of their feed trough, and I can carefully grab her and get her milked.  As long as, the night before, Caleb was able to get her lambs shut up in the house.  Much more likely, however, they stayed out in the briar patch with her, and he can't catch them, so I only milk Chestnut.  I'll keep trying Juniper for another week or so, and if she hasn't figured out how to behave by then, I just switch to another of the Tunis that are already pretty tame.  Juniper, although a "milking" sheep, doesn't appear to give much more milk than the Tunis anyway, so it's probably simpler to go with the better temperament.  It's still useful information, though - I bought her to see if there was a big difference in "milking" sheep versus the Tunis, and I have my answer!  

Liam is also back into the swing of things, goat-wise.  He's got another bottle baby, and he's very happy!  He really wanted another one, and coincidentally it's another girl (named Kaleo, meaning "sound" in Hawaiian because she can really holler!) so we'll keep her, and probably less coincidentally, she's Koa's sister (his bottle baby last year).  I didn't fault their mom last year for not raising Koa - after the CPR and in-house care for a week, not even a spectacular mother would accept a baby she literally never saw.  But then I found this little thing wandering around the pasture, and after a day of watching her try to nurse off anyone that would stand still long enough - even the "teenager" goats that aren't kidding this year, and even other babies, I finally figured out that she belonged to #1410, and she just butted the poor thing away.  So now Kaleo lives with the milking goats and sheep, and Liam is her mama just like for her sister last year.  We had visitors on Monday, and I went in the pen to get Kaleo so they could see her, and she wouldn't come to me - it really is Liam not me, that she's bonded to.  It's pretty sweet!

Overall, we've had a great kidding and lambing season, and I'm expecting to be done within days, whenever Charlotte finally kids.  Now - on to the gardens!