All 4 of our goats have had 2 babies each. Everyone is happy and healthy, resting comfortably. This video was shot this morning of 2 mommas, 4 babies and 1 guard llama. The other 2 mommas, 4 babies and the sire buck are in other pens.
Nice to be done with this kidding season!
The 3rd set of 2 babies were born to Luna.
Our second goat to kid is called Amaranth and the kids are really cute!
This is a video of the first two baby goats learning to nurse.
Here is a video of the first set of babies after they have dried off a bit.
I am using my iPhone to compose this post so I apologize for any odd formatting.
This years kidding season has been a bit Trumatic here on the homestead. Our reliable milker Torte lost her babies in a miscarriage early on this winter. Spelty had been crushed in the goat shed collapse in October 2011 snowstorm. If she had been pregnant she lost it or was never able to get pregnant. That’s okay because her hips may not have been able to handle a pregnancy after healing from her crush injuries.
Luna and Ama kidded out twins each and they look awesome. Unfortunately Luna is rejecting her babies and her milk doesn’t seem to be very robust this year. Ama is having to milk or rather nurse all four babies. Ama has a ton of milk so that’s okay for now.
The really terrible news is that we lost Millet and her two babies to some sort of odd failure of her large intestines. She died on the first day of spring.
What all this means is that this year we only have one goat in milk so I’m going to put away the portable milker and we will milk her by hand and have hardly any milk. Hopefully next year we’ll have better success.
This is the first post I am writing from my iPhone and I hope that it’s going to be helpful to give more recent snapshots of what’s going on at our homestead.
The kids carved pumpkins today and our chickens helped with the mess.
I thought I would share this video today.
I am going to be teaching about the use of the goat in the permacultural setting at the Northeast Permaculture Convergence this July up in Maine!
Details:
July 2 – 4, 2010 at the MOFGA Common Ground Education Center, Unity Maine
Their site -> NE Convergence
More thoughts are developing around my presentation materials and may show up here.
Activate the Wp-cumulus plugin to see the flash tag clouds!
We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.