03/31/2025
This has basically been my view for the last two days, at the tail end of a goat. Calie has had a cute and tiny prefresh first freshening udder and it gave me no inklings that she was about to kid. Friday afternoon she spit out three doelings in the late afternoon wind. One never made it out of the sack, and the other two were barely clean, cold and practically lifeless when we found them. It also appears that they may have been about 10 days early.
With the help of my husband and oldest son we got things situated in the barn and got babies inside into a hot sink of water. They immediately started to perk up, and then went for a blow dry. We got their temps up and came back out to mom to nurse. Calie was not having any part of it, she was rejecting her babies. Of the two kids that made it, one was doing quite well and the other not so much. One nursed right away, and I had to milk Calie out and syringe feed the other. I was up every two hours to make sure these 1 pound 4 ounce babies ate. Saturday morning I was up first thing to get to Farm and Home for some Orphan-No-More powder. Every couple of hours I was out at the barn making Calie stand to help babies nurse. We are now on day two and Calie has started to accept her babies and both are nursing mostly on their own!
Let me tell you, farming is tough. All these pages show you these great things. What they don’t show you is sleepless nights making sure babies are fed. Praying for a miracle, on your hands and knees in the straw, hay, and p**p to do it. In the end, views like these make it all worth it!
