Author: rose

Rio bred two of our friend’s goats. One had triplets and the other had quads. That means that out of the six does he bred, four had triplets or more! All of the does were Nubians, Alpines, or Nubian x Alpine.

Willow’s kittens are three weeks old now. They all have beautiful blue eyes! Three are females and one is a male. Their names are Fivel, Philly, Tilly, and Tanya. All names from the classic “An American Tail”. We haven’t decided who is who though. The one with the most white whines the least when you hold her.

Splash queened (gave birth) a week or so ago. She had two gray and white kittens and one solid gray kitten. One gray and white one is a boy. The others are females. Their names are Sapphire, Amethyst, and Max. She had them between some stuff in the barn, so we can’t really get pictures. Anytime we move them, she puts them back.

We noticed that Willow was getting very round and sure enough, we found a litter of four white kittens. Based on the color of the last white litters, I think that two will look like Tux (snowshoe colorations) and two will have Siamese markings. So far they are doing great!

As you know, we rehomed Eliezer and Gershom. A few days later, we got a call from their owner that Eliezer wasn’t doing very well. They brought him over and we kept him for them. We gave them Zion, who will take a bottle, so that Gershom wasn’t alone. Eliezer was very weak. He could hardly stand and would seize occasionally. We aren’t sure why he was sick. His owners said that he was eating and drinking pretty well. We think it could have been Enterotoximia, Floppy Kid Syndrome, the stress from moving, or possibly a reaction to the milk replacer. We gave him a CD Antitoxin and Vitamin B Complex injection. We also gave him a drop of cayenne tincture. (an easy tincture to make that instantly revives weak or chilled kids) We gave him raw milk, homemade electrolytes, and molasses. We also gave him free choice baking soda. We kept him in the house. The next day he was doing pretty good. By evening he was ready to go home! So Zion, Eliezer, and Gershom are no longer our kid.

Talitha was showing some early labor signs last night. This morning we went out to find twin boys! They were standing and partially wet. The afterbirth had already passed, so we think that she had kidded a couple hours before we went out. The bucklings are very big! We named them Jasper and Onyx. Onyx was 7 pounds 4 ounces and Jasper was 9 pounds 8 ounces. Onyx is silver and Jasper is black. They are pretty active, but they don’t seem to have a suckling reflex. So we are currently syringe feeding them and training them on nursing. If you have any advice let us know. We will keep you updated on how they progress. (I may update in the comments) These bucklings are 3/4 Nubian and 1/4 Alpine. They are registerable. Their sire is Beulah Valley Rio and their dam is Beulah Valley Talitha. The clue for Jasper’s and Onyx’s names in the Bible is this: their names are mentioned in lists several times, including Revelation and Exodus, what objects were their names in the Bible? Leave your guess in the comments.

We think that these are our last kids for the year, but April was exposed and may kid in May.

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!

All of our kids are disbudded now. This was the first time that we’ve disbudded them ourselves. It went pretty good. We only had one problem. When Hephzibah was disbudded it looked great, but within an hour it bled a lot. We were glad to see that the bleeding had stopped though. A few hours later, she was bleeding again! We tried cauterizing the wound, but the bleeding continued. We put several different blood clotting things on her, but she just wouldn’t stop bleeding! We finally just taped gauze to her head and kept her in for the night. We were worried that we would lose her, but in the morning she was fine, so we took her bandages of and let her out with the others. She has been great since! We disbudded them on a windy day, so maybe that cooled the iron too much. She may have rubbed her head too. We are pretty happy with how the disbuddings have come out though! The kids look a lot cleaner than at the vet, because we shaved their heads and used a goat iron instead of a big calf iron. Lily’s kids have such big beautiful stars, that we had to put sunscreen on their heads after we shaved them!

Talitha is getting so fat and pregnant! Her due date is April 1st, so she could kid any day now!

The kids are all growing fast! Gihon is still a little weak though. They have all gotten very active!

Talitha is due soon, so keep your eye out for more kids!

This morning Juniper’s udder was huge, her ligaments were soft, and she looked ready to give birth. We watched her, and she didn’t really have any contractions. I had to be somewhere this morning, so I left. We came home between our commitments and Juniper had kidded! She had triplets! All are healthy, strong babies! There are two doelings and a buckling. We have been so blessed this year with so many doelings! Their names are Beulah, Hephzibah, and Zion. The clue to these names is a little harder. Here’s the clue: two of the names come from one of the major prophet’s books in the Bible. The other name is related to the two. Leave your guess for the meaning behind the names in the Bible, in the comments. The kids’ dam is Juniper (1/2 Nubian 1/2 Alpine) and their sire is Beulah Valley Rio (ADGA Nubian), so their kids are 3/4 Nubian. Sorry the pictures are blurry. 🙂