Category: goats (Page 1 of 9)

Well, with the loss of Elvis and the gift of Reggie from the Lord via our normal goat-kid-buyer back in spring, the things that male and female goats do did take place, as evidenced by the birth of 7 goat kids!

A couple, actually, weren’t expected, as we didn’t really see the mothers being imminent. Plus, one of them has a real problem with her udder, which we’ve been trying to resolve, and just shortly after she gave birth, there was a large blister-ish bubble on the back of her udder, and I accidentally popped it internally, and I don’t know if it was related, but both her right legs started acting injured. Now, she may have injured them, maybe laying too long on that side or something, but she’s still down, and so it was bottle feeding time for the little guy, which we’re calling “Ned”, after his mom Nellie. 🙂

Also, our nanny Adeline has a prolonged udder, so for the first while, Sue “gets” to milk her and bottle feed her kids until the udder is higher and the kids figure out how to suckle her. Well, one has figured it out, the boy, but the girl Sue is still bottle feeding. 🙂 We actually are planning to keep the girl to back-fill for our buck, Shakespeare. We wanted to keep her as she comes from the line of Winnie, our original goat, as she was part Lamancha, and we wanted a little something of Winnie to continue in the herd. 🙂 And, in honor of the barbershop name of her mom (from the song “Sweet Adeline”), we wanted to carry that through, so we’re calling her “Lida Rose”, or “Lida” for short. 😀 We named her brother too as “Liam”.

One other anecdote: our nanny Lily gave birth to triplets, and we thought they were three doelings, so we named them, “Marsha”, “Jan”, and “Cindy” (think 70’s large-family sitcom; Cindy has long ears, like TV Cindy’s pigtails 😀 ). Well, come to find out later, one was a buckling….”Marsha”….so, he’s now called “Marshall”. 😀

Finally, our nanny Hassie had a little girl. 🙂 So, 3 bucklings and 4 doelings in total.

But, without further ado, here’s their video:

This is a new experience for us, having winter kids, so we’ll see how it goes through the times of bad weather. But, we thank the Lord for His provisions of the new baby goats!

— David

Well, this kidding season was different. Elvis our buck we thought last year had gone sterile, and that was confirmed this year as his four does had no kids.

Then with our other buck Shakespeare, we believe one of his does miscarried after getting her head stuck in a gate and apparently getting beat up by other goats, because her back end was bloody and the like, and she didn’t have a kid.

But, we had one mama left — Lucy, our part Spanish, and she did. It was twins initially, but the doeling was still born, but her brother was fine, and he ended up being the lone goat kid this year. 🙂 We called him Louie because of his mom Lucy, but in the end went with Louis. He’s in the picture above.

Then, the fellow who buys our goats each year had an extra Lamancha buck in his possession and offered him to us, and we took him to replace Elvis. That was a gracious gift from the Lord, and the nice gentleman! 🙂

In Spanish, gift is “regalo”, so we decided to call him Reggie 🙂 We decided to put him in with all our females, so we’ll see if we have late fall/early winter babies this year — something we’ve never done, we don’t believe:

But then, Elvis ended up with an infection in his leg that we didn’t realize was there, and perhaps with worms we couldn’t conquer, we found him one day on the verge of death, so we expedited the matter. Always sad to say goodbye, and then having to do that to an animal stinks but does put them out of their misery.

Goodbye, Elvis. We thank the Lord for all of the kids He granted from you. And we thank the folks who gave him to us all here initially:

Lastly, here’s the video of Louis and Reggie, and a quick goodbye to Elvis. Plus, a guest appearance from a dog that comes all the way over here during thunderstorms sometimes whose owner lives about two miles away. 🙂 :

Even though it was only one kid this year, we are always thankful to the Lord for His continuing provisions!

— David

With moving our billies and nannies together this last autumn, it was kidding time! Interestingly, only one buck’s two females actually got bred this year, and the other four goats with the other buck didn’t get pregnant. Two are old, so we figure that might be expected, but not with the other two young ones, so we don’t really know what happened. Perhaps we didn’t leave them together long enough, or perhaps something’s going on with the male, and so Lord willing we’ll hopefully see what happens next season.

But, the Lord did graciously grant four bucklings! Besides the picture above, here is his brother:

And then, here’s their video. If you’re tired of hearing me on the videos most of the time, you get the full narrative from Sue on this one! 😀

Even though it didn’t turn out as anticipated, we thank God that He graciously granted the ones He did, and we pray they will maybe be a blessing to someone else!

— David

Well, the results of last year’s goat breeding time are in! 🙂 God graciously granted 4 bucklings and 2 doelings, although there was another doeling, but she was still-born.

Here are some pictures when they were going to the kind gentleman who buys our goats:

Very sadly though, the Lord, as owner of the goats, decided to reclaim Annie, whose two bucklings are these last two pictures. Thankfully they were 7 weeks old when she died, so we didn’t have to bottle feed them.

Annie was also our little orphan from way back. Here’s a video of her and her brother Spot drinking off the bottles!

This is Hassie’s (Annie’s daughter) daughter (in front), which we’re keeping to replace Annie. We’re calling her Annalita, in honor of grandma. 🙂

Goodbye Annie…we’ll miss you…

Lastly, here’s the video of 2022’s kids:

We always thank the Lord for His gracious provisions, and for the milk, and we pray the kids do well for the new owner!

— David