Goat Surprise

When the winter months drag on, with it's cold rainy days, it's nice when God throws in an early springtime surprise...a warm sunny day, and two little goats.

Yesterday, as we were outside enjoying the Sunday afternoon weather and playing some baseball with the kids in the backyard, Steven happened to notice something looked different about Maybelle.  He told me I should go check it out, that she looked like she may have given birth.

We had been wondering if she was pregnant, since we thought she was "accidentally" bred by one of the male goats that was born last year.  Just a head's up...better to castrate right away. Yeah, I'm sure that's just what you thought I was going to say. :-)  Well, goats are funny cause it's often hard to tell if they're pregnant or just fat.  They tend to have round bellies...and in this cold weather their hair gets really fluffy and they look even bigger. 

So, it was a surprise, but not completely. This was the first of the four goat births we've had on our little farm that I've missed. When I walked into the goat barn the two little goats were huddled in separate corners, cold and dirty. We just couldn't leave them like that.

So...in they came.  

After a nice warm bath and some comfy time by the heater,

 they were dry and clean and ready to go back to their mama.  

So back to the little barn they went...

Unfortunately, their mama doesn't get the Goat Mama of the Year Award.

 In fact, she's a little bit of a goat "freak."

  She nurses off of herself.  Yep, she bends her head all the way back and drinks her own milk.  

And she won't stand still to let her babies nurse.  So that means some extra work for us... 

every couple hours we go out and help the babies nurse.  

And we are working on a contraption to keep Maybelle from stealing their milk!

Yeah, this attempt didn't last long. She had it off in no time.

 I think it's time to break down and buy a dog cone.

And if Maybelle was pregnant then Freedom probably is too. 

 In fact,by the way things look, my guess is we'll have another goat birth adventure tomorrow.