First Babies of 2022 (Bitsy Babies)

Bitsy surprised us today by quietly popping out twins with no fanfare this evening. We had just finished trimming all the hooves - a horrible, grubby job that we put off for too long, as always. Over the winter it is hard to force ourselves to trim as often as we should, what with the ankle deep mud and the shit and the freezing cold. The hooves were all fairly badly overgrown, with the soft rotten spots that they get from standing in the wet all the time. Those spots all need to be trimmed out or they will go lame. 

All the goats are rather flighty and shy after a long winter with little handling, especially the young does. They had to be caught and bodily lifted onto the stanchion, and then it took both of us to grip the legs and hold them still enough to trail with the extremely sharp hoof trimmers. The buck, Jupiter, is extremely strong and does NOT like having his hooves trimmed. Bitsy is small and easier to handle, but she didn’t like it either and struggled a lot. 

After we finished, I opened the gate and let them all out to graze on the front pasture for a while, but Bitsy didn’t follow the herd. She just hung back, bleating plaintively. I was worried the stress of being manhandled might have caused her a shock, or that we might have accidentally hurt one of her legs holding it in position for trimming. I didn’t think she was near kidding yet - she had an udder but it wasn’t tight and shiny the way it gets right before kidding. 

However when I went back out to check in her after dinner, she was in the back of the big barn and two babies were struggling to stand up next to her. I ran for the house yelling for help and towels. Homero and Paloma came out and we all trooped back and put her and the babies into the mama barn, where it is warm and dry. Over the next fifteen minutes we watched as they stood up and successfully nursed. Bitsy was wonderful - she chuckled at them and licked them clean and stood still to let them figure out where the milk is. She’s a great little mama. 

However, she is quite thin. We wormed her yesterday and repeated the worming today - I’m using ivermectin and fenbendazole together, two doses twelve hours apart, repeated in ten days. But as I’ve written ad nauseum, the worms on my farm are very resistant and the poor mamas always get thin and pale this time of year. All I can do is worm her, give her lots of good food, and hope for the best. 

Theres a buck and a doe. As seems to be usual, the buckling is the pretty flashy one, and the doe is just regular brown. But they are both healthy and vigorous, and that’s the most important thing. I’m tremendously relieved after last year’s awful losses that we are off to a good start to kidding season.