Tzipporah’s kids have been very aggressive nursers. Tzipporah’s udder was covered in bloody teeth marks. The other day we got a call from somebody wanting to buy a couple bottle kids. We tried Eliezer and Gershom, Tzipporah’s kids, on the bottle and they took it great! We castrated these little guys and they went to their new home on Thursday.
On Friday we noticed that Pishon, one of Lily’s quadruplets, had become uncoordinated. We brought her in the house and tried to warm her up and give her some food, but at around 3:00 in the morning she sadly passed away. We aren’t really sure why she died. It had been cold for a couple days, but not really below twenty degrees. We had noticed though that she would cry a lot for no good reason. At least now Lily’s other kids can get more milk. Triplets are a lot easier to care for than quadruplets.
So that leaves us with six kids at the moment. Four girls and two boys. We changed Gihon’s name to Pishon.
Talitha is showing signs of early labor, so there should be more babies within the next few days!
Poor Pishon! ;-(
That’s really sad that Pishon is gone. It’s especially discouraging when you try to save a kid, but don’t succeed. Interestingly, a couple of months ago, one of our goat kids was showing the same symptoms that you described. He couldn’t hold up his head, and he seemed to be losing control of his legs. He too would cry out randomly, for no apparent reason. Just a few hours after he started showing the symptoms, he died. That’s really interesting that Pishon died the same way, because we had never seen those symptoms before, and were also confused why he died. Could it have been caused by some sort of a mineral deficiency? We’re still confused what the cause if his death was. That’s really good, though, that Tzipporah’s took to the bottle well! A lot of the time, it’s really hard to get a nurser to become a bottle baby, but I’m glad that you were successful!
Yes, it is discouraging when despite our efforts the kids don’t make it.
That’s interesting that you had a similar experience. Maybe it was a mineral deficiency problem.
We were very surprised that Tzipporah’s kids took the bottle. We’ve tried to get nursers on the bottle and failed before. We are very glad that it worked out this time.