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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

A Sad Day

Well, what was supposed to be a day in the studio turned into a day in the barn. I went out to check the goats around 10:30 this morning, and the older goat (that isn't really ours but we've adopted) was in labor with a kid presenting head first (no feet). The kid was dead--I tried to pull it myself, then called my wonderful neighbor Shelly. I didn't even say who I was, just "Oh, Thank God you're home. One of the goats has a dead baby." She said "I'm on my way."

Turned out there were two babies in the birth canal together--the other had it's rear feet up near the other baby's head. Shelly ended up pulling both of them out, both dead. We buried them and put a blanket over Gruffles, the mama, who seems to be doing okay although she's tired. I still have to give her a shot of antibiotics today, since both Shelly and I had our hands inside her, but it appears that she'll recover.

My children have been waiting for baby goats for 6 weeks now, and they'll be so sad that the babies died.

3 comments:

Jessica Gottlieb said...

Sometimes real life sucks.

Am I way too much of a city girl if I ask how momma goat is feeling? Will she get milk?

I know horses... city horses but I don't know goats.

Anonymous said...

This is a very sad story. But also a very warm story: "I'm on my way." No: don't have time, who are you, why did you call me. "I'm on my way." We need more of that in our lives.

I'm sorry for the loss here, and hope everyone weathers it ok.

Rosie said...

I'm so sorry you had such a difficult presentation with the kids dying. We only had to go in after BossyToe who had been cooking an extra week and was too big for the doe to push out. We thought she was dead as we were pulling her out, but she came to life the moment she hit the ground.

One of the does that got impregnated by my boys this past summer delivered a severely deformed buck kid. The doe was a bit elderly.