Ginger at day 150.
This is when the girls love to really torture us. Of course, I had most of today and yesterday off, but does Ginger care? Does she squirt out those babies when I have plenty of time to devote to fanning her and feeding her peeled grapes? Does she appreciate the significance of a calendar and a schedule?
Nope. Instead, like any doe worth her salt, she will test my devotion by choosing a day when I am scheduled top to bottom with important appointments. Appointments that pay the mortgage and put grain in her feed tub and hay in her hay rack. She will test my devotion and she will not be disappointed. I will drop everything and run to her side to make sure she is safe and that her babies arrive healthy and strong and are quickly filled with colostrum, that vital first thick, yellow milk that is critical to their survival. And that she is fanned and fed peeled grapes and that I hold her hand.....er.....hoofy. Good thing she doesn't demand caviar....
Besides the calendar, I watch her udder development and her ligaments. Her udder is certainly getting larger, but it is not tight yet...it will get much tighter on the big day, if she follows the pattern she's created with her previous two pregnancies. Which is to torture me by being several days late.
The expanding bellies are hard to miss. Here they are just three and a half weeks ago, and here they are today:
Ginger today....I can no longer say babies on the right, rumen on the left...those babies are displacing her rumen now for sure! (The top of this photo is Ginger's right side.) Triplets? Twins?
Peach. Babies on the bottom of the photo, rumen on the top. She is due in six days, officially. I'm gonna say twins....what do you think?
I had to throw in this photo, which would normally be discarded, to show you the challenges of photographing nosy goats. It is very hard to get a clear picture of anything without a snuffling nose in the lens. Peach's nose, Ginger's belly.
Peach still runs like a deer and spars with her sister, Plum, but Ginger is now moving rather slowly and methodically, and taking frequent naps. It is shedding season, and she itches. Poor gal needs help, which I gladly supply. She can't reach past that huge baby bump.
Spring is so exciting. So much to do, so much new life. Soon, baby goats....I can hardly wait!
I am waiting for the new baby pics. :))
ReplyDeleteAs far as kidding/calving on time, our first year to have a calf born here, she was due on a day when Joel Salatin was going to be in Cambridge, Mass.
I just knew if we went, she'd calve, and if we didn't she wouldn't for days. We didn't go and she was 10 days late. She was AI, so we knew exactly when she was due, too.
So the wait goes on....
Of course! I ruined it this year by being so prepared. Silly goats. I can't wait to share pictures of something other than bellies, udders, and....er....hoo-hoo's!
ReplyDeleteYears ago there was a mare in my care who went a full year! That is a month overdue, and yes, she was hand-bred so there was no doubt as to the due date. She gave birth to a teensy peanut of a foal, too. Silly beasts. They all love to torture us.