DOB: 3/17/05
Age: 1 y 1m
1st Freshening: Gestation 146 days; 2 bucklings
Due Date: April 7, 2006 Kidded on April 3, 2006
Udder shots, 1 month fresh
Sire: Pepper, our unregistered blue-eyed Nigerian Dwarf buck
Dam: Zoë is a 75% recorded grade doe
DD: U-Say Ranch Lightning Bolt
DS: Sire: N.AZ. Anatolians Keci’s Bambi is a registered American buck
Awesome birth! Zoë did so wonderful. Both boys are doing great.
About 7:30 this morning I milked Dani, and I thought Zoë looked like she could be in early labor. She had that “zen” look about her, standing as still as a statue, stargazing. The rest of the herd was wandering around nibbling on the remainders of breakfast, drinking water, lying around chewing cud.
Here are some pictures of Zoë. I’m not so good at reading the ligaments, as far as I can tell, Brooke’s were GONE a few days ago, I can put my fingers right around her tailbone. Zoë’s seemed to be gone, too. Anyway, another telltale sign that birth is imminent is when they get a hollow look in their side. You can see that here in Zoë; the time on this photograph is 8:45am.
8:46am Zoë was pretty well bagged up, too.
8:48am Here’s a few shots of her concentrating. Brooke is concentrating, too, but no action on her part. Brooke’s due on the 5th.
So I kept going in and out checking on Zoë. Finally at about 10:10am, my ds hollered “What’s she doing out there? Is she kidding?” I went out to take a look at Zoë and she was in the barn.
Dh went to get water. Ds and I sat with Zoë for a few minutes and then he said to call him on his cell phone if she starts kidding. I told him I would. Before dh got back from the well, both kids had been born!
10:20am Right after ds went back in the house, she start pushing and I could tell the baby was starting to make its way through the birth canal, so I called him and told him he’d better hurry. He came running out, with his camcorder to tape the blessed event.
Zoë stood through a couple of more pushes, and one hoof was coming out. I know by now that as long as a mouth presents with the one hoof, one hoof is perfectly fine (two hooves is best, everyone says). So I didn’t bother to consider assisting at this point. Here is a picture after she laid down and you can see the kid’s foot and mouth and tongue. She pushed several times and I finally helped a tiny bit by pushing back a little bit on her vulva and then pulling ever so slightly on the one foot that was presented. Within seconds he was born.
As you can see by this next picture, the second buckling was born within 5 minutes of the first one.
Wow. She did so great. She let me milk her, and I got the black and white boy to suck on the bottle, no problem. But the little brown and white boy acts like I’m abusing him. I tried several more times throughout the day, but he just won’t cooperate. I was hoping to get them to take the bottle a few times, it seems to help them to be more people friendly.
And here is the little family. Not even one hour old and the little guys are up and about, all dried off and nursing great.
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
Zoë’s udder at one month freshened. We separate the dams from their kids overnight. We had separated Zoë at 6pm and we took these pictures just before milking at 5am.
I am not milking her out all the way because her kids are only one month old. The most I’ve gotten was on Monday, when I took 3.3 pounds. This morning I took 2.6 pounds. Here is what her udder looks like after taking nearly 3 pounds of milk.
