02/15/2025
It has been a busy past ten days or so.
We finally have kids on the ground after a rough start to kidding season.
Minerva started off with three bucklings. The smallest came first and she accidentally sat on him, he made it another 24 hours, but sadly didn't make it. Her remaining two bucklings haven't missed a beat though. Oreo was the most ferocious at nursing and stayed with mom. Klondike ended up coming in to be a bottle baby (of course they were born on the coldest night we had had in a while).
Next up was Izzy. Not to be outdone, she had FOUR, yes four babies. Two bucklings, two doelings. The girls came into the house, Izzy is raising the boys. We have plenty of pics of Pipsqueak (you'll see why she's named that) and sister. But the boys aren't as easy to get a pic of, it's a blur of white streaking across the pen.
After her C-section last year, we weren't sure if Athena would get rebred or if she would be able to have babies naturally or need another C-section. Well boss lady got home from work and helped Athena deliver twin bucklings. One was alive and vigorous, the other was DOA, it appears big brother had been clogging the works.
While boss lady was cleaning up from delivering Athena's babies, Thumbelina wanted to be done with pregnancy too. She, being the star achiever she is, delivered a caped traditional and a solid black doelings. The caped came into the house, again, that damn 5 degree temps in the barn is just brutal for these little wet stinkers.
That same night, Coco had had enough and gave us twin girls and a buckling. One doeling is a red paint, the others are solid red with a titch of white ticking here and there. The boy came in for the bottle brigade (we won't ask her to raise three).
The next day Maleficent gave eviction orders to a huge doeling, looks just like her mama.
Boss lady got one day off, and then Artemis decided "enough is enough." And made boss lady late for work because she had to help deliver triplets. Two doelings and one buckling. And let me tell you, they have some chrome on them! It's easy to forgive confirmation faults with pops of color, but these kiddos are amazing, so much bone! It was the best Valentine's Day gift ever!
Then at 10 pm Bloomers decided to be difficult. She had a single huge doeling. What she didn't put into a second kid, she put all into a big noggin, strong back and thick long legs. After a few tries getting the baby out the natural way, boss lady and boss man decided it was more important to just get baby out and save Mama some trauma to her hind end. By midnight then section was done, barn cleaned up, towels ready to wash, baby tubed with colostrum. The little flashy red dapple came into the house since Bloomers was not interested in being mom after her ordeal. Can't fault the girl. So now she gets to heal and baby will be the newest bottle brigade member.
In total we have 9 babies in the barn and 8 in the house 🙄
Thank goodness boss man got boss lady a couple bags of milk replacer for an early Valentine's Day present.
