One of my goats decided she wanted to celebrate Daylight Savings Time by giving birth a week and a half prematurely!!
Wowzers, NOT what I had expected for my Sunday evening. I'd noticed Peanut (mama goat) had been acting a little funny that day, so I sat with her for awhile after James and I finished some projects, and sure enough, about 5 o'clock, I realized that she was going into active labor! I had the supplies ready in anticipation for NEXT week, but thankfully we had everything on hand, and she popped out two little ones within just a couple of minutes! She did great cleaning them off and doing nuzzling mama goat things like she's supposed to.
It was very exhilarating to be a part of! Definitely a first time for me, and was just miraculous to see it all happen right in front of me!
Since this is our first time kidding, we didn't immediately notice anything weird about the babies... We got them dried off and warm, and waited for them to get up and moving. James made an excellent midwife helper.
It was only until a couple of hours later when the babies weren't up and running around that it kind of dawned on us just HOW under-baked these two were. They each weigh about a pound (5-6 lbs would be average weight for their breed!) Definitely preemies.
The bugger of it is, since they can't stand up, they can't nurse mama goat normally, and aren't big enough to stay warm in the barn. So we suddenly found ourselves with two new bleating bunk mates! I also had to learn how to milk a goat RIGHT THEN so we had something to feed them! Thankfully Peanut cooperated and had at least a little milk coming in, so we were able to get them a bottle.
We made a little goat NiCU nest near the heater in our room, and have been taking turns getting up an ungodly amount of times during the night to feed and check on them.
We were really unsure if they would survive the night even, since just like humans, the lungs are the last to develop. For all their squalling and squawking though, those little lungs sure sound fine to me!!
Day three today, and they're doing just great-- the little white one is a male, and he eats like a champ. He's perfectly content to just laze about all day between feedings.
First bath time! (Don't ask why we had to do bathtime, it was not pretty.)
And the little girl could care less about eating, but she's already stood up once on her own last night! She reminds me of a baby moose-- just 90% legs and no body!
Just praying our other two does keep their hooves together till they're supposed to!! Could use a couple of nights rest in between batches!
