December 2012 Kidding

So...I am really not very good with this blogging thing.  I try every year or so, and fail miserably.  That is my disclaimer.  On the upside, being a farm blog, I figure, as long as I have posts about super important things, like new baby goats, I am doing pretty well.  With that said...

This year, we chose to breed our senior does to kid more like 10 months apart, instead of a year.  That put due dates in December 2012.  Overall, it went great, all babies born here were healthy, two does had triplets, and one doe (that we purchased over the summer) had twins.  Two does we sold this fall (Peekaboo and Amber) also had triplets by our buck, at their new homes.  That is up from twins and singles last time around.

General reflections...personally, for us, kidding in December was pretty crazy, especially since one of them waited until 2 days before Christmas Eve to kid, after toying with us for 2.5 weeks.  I felt like the head start on the holidays I got right after Thanksgiving evaporated before my very eyes, and I spent 2.5 weeks in barn clothes, stressed and tired.  At least the slow poke made up for it with triplets doelings!  So, in the future, we will aim for not the month of Christmas for kiddings.  Since 10 months seemed to work, we are planning to kid this group of does again in October 2013.  That should be enough before the holidays, and far enough after our human baby comes (may ish).

Also, crawling around the barn on my knees at 4ish months pregnant (for the 4th time, and man oh man is everything happening faster this time around!), was less fun than it sounds (but it was doable, thanks especially to my helpful assistant goat-midwife (my mom, who actually enjoys driving 40 minutes out here, with little notice, to get to help deliver goat babies), my hubby, and my kids being pretty thrilled to get to spend so much time in the goat pen), and I am not particularly thrilled that I will be doing the same thing at 7/8 months along when our junior does are kidding in March.

All that said, we ended up with 8 babies from 3 moms; 4 boys, 4 girls; everyone is healthy; and we got a keeper doeling from the doe we were really hoping to get a keeper from!