Babies...Babies...Babies...

Gertrude and her eleven purebred red wattles.

Brie's new babies, one doe, one buck.

In my last post I discussed the girth of Gertie, and how she looked quite pregnant for still having over a month till her expected due date. Well, last night Nate and I coaxed her out of the pasture and into the newly cleaned, remodeled, and updated goat shed. Today when I got home (after 6 pm) I ran down to the shed to check on her because I didn't see her. With good reason. A little red wattle piglet was scurrying around. Wowsers!!! The iphone got some usage tonight between calling Nate, my grandma, parents... along with a few facebook posts. I spent the next four hours with Gertie as she gave birth to twelve gorgeous piglets. Sadly, the tenth one was born dead, but our current count is 6 girls, 5 boys. Poor Gertrude is so tired, she ate a bit of food, drank some water, and layed back down to reopen the all you can eat buffet. Kohen spent a bit of time with me in the shed tonight, observing the birth of 7, 8, and 10. He started to get worried with number eight, and counted Gerties nipples. Mom, she might not have enough! was his thought. I reminded him that siblings are always supposed to share. He also was emotional during the birth of number ten, when it was evident we couldn't bring her back. Auntie Linda was here watching the show at that time and we both talked Koe through the tough situation. He stroked her little ears, sucked back tears and then began cuddling the wiggling, squealing, babies. Our first piglet/farrowing experience went well. The babies are purebred red wattle, but will not be registerable since we don't know who 'got busy' with Gertie before we picked her up from her original farm.
Poor Nate got put into duty modifying the shed to minimize the chance that Gertie accidentally lays on her new babes.

I finally made it into the house about 10:30 and decide to sit with a friendly beer and watch a couple of minutes of Deadliest Catch. It was a very short couple of minutes as we heard a goat begin to scream from the garage/barn. I know what that means. Would you believe it was Brie? Our yearling 1/2 nubian, 1/2 saanen doe? I walked in as she was giving the last push to birth a little doeling. She looked at the baby, and ran. Great. I ended up having to enlist Nate to help me move Brie into a jug, and try to get her to acknowledge her baby. Didn't work so well, and it got worse when I realized Brie was having a second baby. The second one was a buck, with similar markings to his sister. 45 minutes later I'm back in the house. Baby goats are dried off, their mom is tied so she can't make a run for it, and they have been assisted in their first tastes of colostrum, Baby pigs have been checked on three more times, and are busy nursing. My boys are sound asleep on the couch- since their mom neglected them tonight. Nate is asleep in his recliner. I better go to bed, but Sweet Home Alabama (my most favorite movie of all time) is on, and I really should make one more check of all thirteen new babies.

I also forgot to mention that Annafleece finally had her lamb yesterday morning, a big black ram lamb with lots of white markings. They will get their own post later, when I've had some sleep!