Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Orphea's New Baby

We have a new girl at the farm. Orphea, Julia's prize winning goat from last year's fair, just delivered. It was a rough day. She had twins, as most goats do. The first one was a massive buck kid. His head got stuck. This was Orphea's first, and he was just too big. She worked for an hour at least. (when I found her she was already well along. But, when I had been out to walk the pasture two hours earlier, no indication of anything. Her due date was Thursday, so we were expecting something soon, but we usually have a bit more warning.) I got her out of the pasture and back to the barn. (I like kidding on pasture, but ours is still a bit wet.) After getting her to the barn, we worked on getting the buck kid out for about 45 minutes. Finally, I had to just pull him. Not fun for any of us, and very disheartening to deliver a dead baby after all that work. Five minutes later we had the second one.



A tiny doe kid. All black, just like her mom. She came out screaming and wiggling which brought a smile to the situation. We named her Phoebe, staying with the mythological theme (Orphea's sire was named Apollo.) Mother and daughter are doing fine. Phoebe will be spending tonight and at least some of tomorrow living in the dog box in our kitchen.
Phoebe in the kitchen.


She is so tiny, I need to keep an eye on her. After I'm sure she is doing fine she will join the bottle babies for a spring filled with fun and frolic.

2 comments:

Ms. Anne said...

Oh how cute! I love the color. I also like the mythological theme you got going with the names. We use dog boxes and other doggie stuff for our goats, too. My friends over at W Dairy just put a child's plastic play set in their goat pen. The new kids love it.

jack-of-all-thumbs said...

Sorry you (and the does) have had a rough go of it. In years past I've helped my wife pull a number of kids. Goats were my favorite large animal to help her with by far - smart and not too large. I still carry a nice scar in my eyebrow from being stupid around a cow. And we won't talk about the horses....

Anyway, it sounds like you're a good dad in every sense of the word.

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