This time of year has come to mean many things to us: Dave finally taking off his coveralls from wearing and sleeping in them allll winter long (we call it his “onesey”); new life in terms of crops, gardens and…….. BABY GOATS!! We have been raising goats for almost ten years now, and the Lord has been most gracious to us through our learning curve so far. We are always in awe of His mercies towards us. With that, I will take you on a mini pictorial tour of this years young-ens:

May I introduce to you Abe. He looks the most like his daddy, Rocky, out of this year’s kid crop. His sister, Abby, is sitting next to him:

And here is their mama, Adeline, with Abby at her feet:

Next is our orphan Annie from a few years ago, the mama of new l’il Abner here. He takes the prize for looking the most like *his* daddy, Shatner:

This is Nellie, the sister of Adeline in the pic above:

Nellie was blessed to have triplets this year: Artie, Gueney, and Lance: (Gueney with the long ears is the runt but, BOY, does she make up for it in moxie!):

Here is Marie, the daughter of Betsy that died a couple of years ago. She is pure Nubian, and she, also, was blessed with triplets this year. Soon after they were born, I started to notice a swelling under her jaw and into the neck area. After doing some research, it appeared she maybe had some form of bottlejaw, which apparently can be caused by worms or protein deficiency. And perhaps the strain of giving birth to triplets made her weaker and zapped her resources. One site said to slow down before running out and getting a chemical de-wormer, and one site recommended apple cider vinegar as a potential remedy. Well, I started giving her about 20 CCs of raw apple cider vinegar diluted with water for the first couple of days, gave her protein cubes with food-grade diatomaceous earth on it for any worms, and made sure she had extra grazing time, and thankfully to God, it went away! I really believe it helped too, because I started to back off the regimen, and the swelling came back, and when I started it up again daily in a smaller amount (5 CCs apple cider vinegar/5CCs lacto-fermented juice/water combination daily), it went away again! The lacto-fermented vegetable liquid is for good bacteria to help her rumen function well. We will probably continue with it while trying to slowly ween her off of it, and we are thankful to God for allowing us to find something to help:

And here they are! Farrah, Kate and Jack. Their daddy is pure Nubian, as well:

Next stop: Pammy! She has been about the sweetest goat one could hope for. Little Sammy (long ears) and Tammy are hanging on her apron strings here:

And here is Gracie, one of Pammy’s oldest kids. She was also blessed with triplets this year, but God saw fit to take them away within a couple days of birth. (This is explained on the video). She and I have bonded pretty closely since then because I started milking her right away. She takes after her mama with her very sweet temperament:

Here is our little video so you can see them live doing goat kid “stuff”:

Marie’s triplets were born in April when it was still kind of chilly on some mornings. I had seen my neighbor do this when her kids were born in the winter time. I took the sleeve of an old sweatshirt, cut two armholes in it and stuck her head through the end of the sleeve. Voila! It was that easy to make a quick kid coat. Here is our model, Kate:

I improvised a coat for Kate’s brother, Jack. His “plumbing” requires different covering techniques. I used a hood from a sweatshirt and secured it with a make-shift belt. It worked well!

Even though we have learned that this time of year can bring the heartache of loss as well as the elation of lots of new life, we are so very thankful for God’s provision and mercy and pray for Him to continue to make us good and wise stewards of His gifts.

Susan