At around 10 this morning, on this cold but sunny day, Samanta went over to the south side of the old outhouse and had her two. Both doelings, we think. Here they are at 4:00 this afternoon, just before we moved them into the main goat shed.
For those of you keeping score at home, we have so far had 7 births of 13 kids (4 sets of twins, 1 set of triplets, 2 singles). The preliminary gender breakdown is 2 bucklings and 11 doelings. We started off a bit over a week ago with Glory having her two on President’s Day, then after a brief respite we’ve had ‘em pretty constant from Saturday through today (Tuesday). We have four more does we know are settled (aka preggers). In this picture you can see how they all like to sleep together for warmth and companionship.
Last night Astrid had these two cuties — the white one is a buckling the other a doeling. She pulled a Garbo on us (“I want to be alone”) and had wandered off down to the meadow paddock late yesterday and had these overnight. We found her this morning with these two all dry and fluffy, and brought them all back up to the main goat shed.
Yesterday afternoon Iris had triplets — three girls. Last year Glory had triplets and one didn’t make it, so we’ve been on pins and needles with this set, especially with the weather being so cold and windy (last night was 18° with 15 mph winds). But, knock wood, they all seem pretty healthy today. Upon checking on them around noon we also found Artemis in the process of having her twins. In the picture that’s Iris and her crew in the foreground and Artemis with her minute-olds in the back.
Maizy had this little white one early this morning. As predicted, it blew up quite cold overnight (high today is only supposed to be 33°) and it is also windy, so we are glad that she and Oona have their new ones in the shed. We have not yet sexed the latest two — both moms are first-time kidders and we want the maternal bond to remain unfettered for a bit. [Update: Oona's is a buckling, Maizy's is a doeling.]
Late yesterday afternoon Oona had this white single. While most goats have twins, it is not unusual for a yearling first-timer to have only one.
Phoebe had two does this morning around 10 o’clock — went out to do a little work on trimming out the goat shed and got there just in time to watch the second one coming out. Glad she had them today — it is quite a mild day (63°!) but it is supposed to blow up cold this evening. Like Glory, she had one light-colored one and one dark. The light one has a distinct dorsal stripe down her back. In the picture the new kids are about an hour old; that’s Mama Phoebe on the left taking a much-deserved breather and one of Glory’s five-day-old kids looking on at the right.
Last August both our bucks breached the fencing and had, um, “access” to our does, including Glory who was in estrus (“heat”) at the time. Based on our calculations Glory’s due date was yesterday. So what did we find yesterday morning but that she had kidded overnight — the first Riversdell kids of the season! Now, our two bucks last August were Pistol Pete, a brown pure-bred Toggenburg, and Puck, an all-white mostly Saanen. Any guesses as to the poppa(s) of these two cuties? Both are does; here they are this morning snoozing in the sun.
After a very mild January we finally got a dose of real winter weather over the weekend — 8 inches of wet clinging snow. This same storm dumped a record-setting 27 inches on Central Park, the heaviest snowfall in NYC since record keeping began in 1869. I’ll take our eight, thank you very much!
