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This morning, at 8:30 AM, Bobby woke me from a dead sleep by calling my name: "Dawn!"
My first thought: Oh shit, I overslept. I was interviewed for the Tolkien Experiences podcast and was doing a live premier with my interviewer, Luke Shelton, at 9:30 this morning. I'd been up late the night before due to a combination of 1) drinking a beverage that consisted of the day-old coffee and amaretto at about 9 PM, 2) getting hooked into research lately, late at night, huddled up in the corner of the couch under my blanket, and last night no exception, and 3) Hermione pooping the bed last night and so changing her bedding and wiping down her crate at 1 AM.
Then: "Come outside, quick!"
Which at that point I thought: Denali's out. Or something got eaten. Or Denali got eaten.
(This is not as randomly morbid as perhaps it seems. Guinevere was very keyed up last night and kept going out onto the deck to bark at the darkness. Then we heard a single gunshot, which in the country, at night, usually means that some animal has gotten into someone's livestock.)
Then: "We have goat babies!"
So despite my brain rushing to all manner of tragedies great and small, it turned out to be a good thing. In thirty seconds, I was running down the steps of my front porch, pulling on my coat, to the barn. They had just been born. One hadn't even stood up yet, and they were both still wet. If Bobby was five minutes earlier, he would have seen it happen. The doe was Elanor, which is not surprising: She is the youngest but also the daughter of a champion milker, and she is ambitious. Always shoving to the front for everything, the biggest, the pushiest, the loudest. Even her hooves grow faster than the others. While I am fond of Lobelia, and Bobby prefers Estella, a.k.a., Brother Silly, Elanor is hard to like because she's so intense. Naturally, she'd be the first to freshen.
We had begun preparations for freshening, but we didn't think it'd happen till mid-May based on our math. We brought home our buck, Denali, in mid-November. His owner didn't have him on grain, so he was tiny, and ... how do I put this politely? ... he frankly couldn't reach our does, who have been on grain since they were little and were large animals by this point. We started him on grain, and he grew fast after that, and we figured he could reach by mid-December, giving us till mid-May. Well! It seems where there is a will, there is a way, and Denali and Elanor figured something out because, by the math, she got pregnant in mid- to late November, shortly after we brought Denali home. Anyway, Bobby had a birthing kit set up, and thank goodness he'd gotten Denali moved out into his own bachelor pad a few days prior, but we weren't expecting to need any of this stuff for a few weeks yet, so there was much scrambling around to get it and the usual miasma of nerves that attends doing anything like this for the first time. But we did it. We got the kids dried off and dipped their navels; they wouldn't nurse right away, so we milked out colostrum from Elanor and bottle-fed enough to them according to their weight.
I missed my podcast premier.
I reached a point where I thought, if I make it, I hope this not on video: I was in my pajamas with unbrushed hair, literally covered in wood shavings and straw, dabbed here and there with blood, iodine, and goat colostrum. But I didn't make it, so it didn't matter. There is the truism that goats freshen at the worst possible time, and this was probably the worst possible time for me all week because this was something I was really looking forward to.
Elanor, true to character, did not seem enthralled with motherhood. So we milked her and, when the time came, dutifully heated up bottles ... and discovered that they had already been nursing! So, so far, no bottle feeding. No bottle feeding. If we had to bottle feed, of course, I'd deal with it. We bottle-fed all three does. Which is why it's not something I find enchanting anymore. We bottle-fed all three does, for months. It was cute and fun when they were little and got old fast after that. I'd much rather leave this work to Elanor.
And the stats: We had one little doeling--about 1 lb.--and a little buckling at about 3 lbs. We won't name them--their eventual owners can do that--but I've given then placeholder names of Stoicism (the buckling) and Persistence (the doeling), based on their personalities.
So. This is another huge step for our enterprise (which we have named Forn Rhûn Farm) as homesteaders and maybe someday small business owners. We now have our own source of milk and all the wonderful things that come with that. We were down to see the babies about an hour ago, and all are doing well. Elanor has settled in; the kids are content and either toddling around or nestled in the straw.
Lobelia and Brother Silly are next. Brother Silly is huge; it would not surprise me if she has triplets. Lobelia, on the other hand, is the smallest, and it would not surprise me if she singled for her first. At this point, we have to expect that they could arrive any day now because who knows when Denali managed his magic. Keeping with the freshen-at-the-worst-possible-time trend, I fully expect Brother Silly to freshen during the SWG book club on Sunday.
Naturally, I could not ask y'all to sit through all this and then not post pictures of the kids.
( Goat Kids )
My first thought: Oh shit, I overslept. I was interviewed for the Tolkien Experiences podcast and was doing a live premier with my interviewer, Luke Shelton, at 9:30 this morning. I'd been up late the night before due to a combination of 1) drinking a beverage that consisted of the day-old coffee and amaretto at about 9 PM, 2) getting hooked into research lately, late at night, huddled up in the corner of the couch under my blanket, and last night no exception, and 3) Hermione pooping the bed last night and so changing her bedding and wiping down her crate at 1 AM.
Then: "Come outside, quick!"
Which at that point I thought: Denali's out. Or something got eaten. Or Denali got eaten.
(This is not as randomly morbid as perhaps it seems. Guinevere was very keyed up last night and kept going out onto the deck to bark at the darkness. Then we heard a single gunshot, which in the country, at night, usually means that some animal has gotten into someone's livestock.)
Then: "We have goat babies!"
So despite my brain rushing to all manner of tragedies great and small, it turned out to be a good thing. In thirty seconds, I was running down the steps of my front porch, pulling on my coat, to the barn. They had just been born. One hadn't even stood up yet, and they were both still wet. If Bobby was five minutes earlier, he would have seen it happen. The doe was Elanor, which is not surprising: She is the youngest but also the daughter of a champion milker, and she is ambitious. Always shoving to the front for everything, the biggest, the pushiest, the loudest. Even her hooves grow faster than the others. While I am fond of Lobelia, and Bobby prefers Estella, a.k.a., Brother Silly, Elanor is hard to like because she's so intense. Naturally, she'd be the first to freshen.
We had begun preparations for freshening, but we didn't think it'd happen till mid-May based on our math. We brought home our buck, Denali, in mid-November. His owner didn't have him on grain, so he was tiny, and ... how do I put this politely? ... he frankly couldn't reach our does, who have been on grain since they were little and were large animals by this point. We started him on grain, and he grew fast after that, and we figured he could reach by mid-December, giving us till mid-May. Well! It seems where there is a will, there is a way, and Denali and Elanor figured something out because, by the math, she got pregnant in mid- to late November, shortly after we brought Denali home. Anyway, Bobby had a birthing kit set up, and thank goodness he'd gotten Denali moved out into his own bachelor pad a few days prior, but we weren't expecting to need any of this stuff for a few weeks yet, so there was much scrambling around to get it and the usual miasma of nerves that attends doing anything like this for the first time. But we did it. We got the kids dried off and dipped their navels; they wouldn't nurse right away, so we milked out colostrum from Elanor and bottle-fed enough to them according to their weight.
I missed my podcast premier.
I reached a point where I thought, if I make it, I hope this not on video: I was in my pajamas with unbrushed hair, literally covered in wood shavings and straw, dabbed here and there with blood, iodine, and goat colostrum. But I didn't make it, so it didn't matter. There is the truism that goats freshen at the worst possible time, and this was probably the worst possible time for me all week because this was something I was really looking forward to.
Elanor, true to character, did not seem enthralled with motherhood. So we milked her and, when the time came, dutifully heated up bottles ... and discovered that they had already been nursing! So, so far, no bottle feeding. No bottle feeding. If we had to bottle feed, of course, I'd deal with it. We bottle-fed all three does. Which is why it's not something I find enchanting anymore. We bottle-fed all three does, for months. It was cute and fun when they were little and got old fast after that. I'd much rather leave this work to Elanor.
And the stats: We had one little doeling--about 1 lb.--and a little buckling at about 3 lbs. We won't name them--their eventual owners can do that--but I've given then placeholder names of Stoicism (the buckling) and Persistence (the doeling), based on their personalities.
So. This is another huge step for our enterprise (which we have named Forn Rhûn Farm) as homesteaders and maybe someday small business owners. We now have our own source of milk and all the wonderful things that come with that. We were down to see the babies about an hour ago, and all are doing well. Elanor has settled in; the kids are content and either toddling around or nestled in the straw.
Lobelia and Brother Silly are next. Brother Silly is huge; it would not surprise me if she has triplets. Lobelia, on the other hand, is the smallest, and it would not surprise me if she singled for her first. At this point, we have to expect that they could arrive any day now because who knows when Denali managed his magic. Keeping with the freshen-at-the-worst-possible-time trend, I fully expect Brother Silly to freshen during the SWG book club on Sunday.
Naturally, I could not ask y'all to sit through all this and then not post pictures of the kids.
( Goat Kids )
The kids are here!!! What a perfect way to celebrate Beltane. This morning, Bobby and I drove down to Stowe to pick up our two little doelings. Well ... you can see that "two" turned into "three" quite easily. We arrived to the farm and a pen of six little kids, all a week or two old: five does and a buck. The owner remarked that this is the time of year when it is hard to sell kids, so if we wanted three instead ... she then went away for three minutes, which was enough time for Bobby to look at me with eyes taking up half his face and remark how cute the little black one was for me to know: Yep. Totally going home with three.
