Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Spring Kidding is Over!

Good Morning!  Well, it's finally done.  The 2011 Kidding Season is over.  The final tally was 4 does, 4 bucks.  The bucks have turned out to be really good quality, placing well in the NCDGBA Spring show this weekend.  The last one was due to kid last Thursday, but Michaela's goats are all notoriously late kidders.  This one was no exception.  She was a small first freshener, which was enough of a worry, but she had also been bred to a buck whose offspring had given us plenty of trouble this year.  All of us left home while Michaela attended the goat show this weekend prayed that her late kidding streak would continue.  And it did.  By late Sunday, Eva still hadn't kidded and wasn't even showing any signs she was thinking about it.

My day always starts with feeding animals and cleaning pens.  I had peeked in on Eva as I made my rounds and she was just laying there, chewing her cud, so I continued raking out the goat yard.  Later Ray came out (since he's on vacation, he actually had Memorial Day off for the first time since 1982) and, as we stood talking, we heard a high-pitched "maaa".  When we looked into the pen there stood a brand new goat kid, all dried off and running around.  Evidently Eva had kidded sometime during the night and just continued on as usual.  You gotta love those natural birthers.

May Yahweh bless you in this new day!

Laurie

No comments: