One goat, two goat, three goat, four...: Bert and Ernie

Things got really busy a few weeks ago. Mike & I were planning to go to Minnesota for 10 days to visit family/friends and paddle the Mississippi River Challenge. Leaving the homefront, of course, always requires a bit of prep -- laundry, cleaning, packing, tying up loose ends at work, putting garden sprinklers on timers, figuring out who is going to take care of goats and chickens, setting up goats and chickens so that said caretaker has as easy a time as possible, etc.

And this time we were also still waiting for Dublin to have babies. After Breezy's c-section, we were a little nervous about it (note, though, that Breezy is doing great -- see, she even wants to get close to the camera).

When we originally planned our trip, we had expected that all the relevant babies would be born and self-sufficient well before now, but here we were a week before the trip, one c-section down, and no new babies in the picture. Oh, and having accidentally washed Mike's cell phone in the laundry, making arranging last minute logistics in Minnesota a little trickier (all the numbers were in his phone).

Anyway, about 5 days before our flight, Dublin went into labor. But it didn't progress. Two fluid sacks burst, a glimpse of a nose, an attempted reach inside to pull out babies, and still no progress. So we called the vet (again in the middle of the night) and took her into town. This vet was a different one than last time, quieter, more of a horse vet, much less into fiddling with a tiny goat to bring the kids out the regular way. So he gave it a quick try and then went straight to c-section. This time, though, the kids made it. They were way smaller than Breezy's kid, and Dublin is a much bigger goat, so we wondered perhaps if they could have made it out with some pulling instead of a c-section... but on the other hand, this vet was a fast c-sectioner, so maybe that made the difference. In any case, two boy goats and one post-surgery mama later, we went home.

Dublin had been sedated and she spent the first day home in a stupor, drooling, not really up to the task of feeding her kids. So we milked her and bottle fed them. One baby took to the bottle really well, the other one not so much (although, we had slightly greater success when hanging the bottle down from underneath a bent knee so that it would look more like a goat udder). Eventually both kids figured out more or less how to nurse, but we had to hold Dublin in place so they could do so. We adjusted work schedules to be home (during day) and awake (at night) at 4-5 hour intervals to force-nurse and bottle-feed as needed.

Once Dublin came out of her stupor, however, she got mad. Not having been there to lick the kids off when they were born, she didn't really realize they were hers. They smelled funny (mama goats recognize their kids by smelling their behinds, which, if they are nursing, smell like the mama's digested milk -- our kids smelled a little like her and a little like formula and other goats' milk we were bottle feeding them), and they kept bugging her, and her incision scar was hurting. Depending on how she was feeling, the forced nursing sessions ranged from just holding her collar to let the kids nurse to basically holding her down with full force and preventing her from pushing, biting, and stepping on the kids.

Oh, by the way, this is Mike with no hair/beard!

Breezy had recovered from surgery really quickly, so we were hoping the same would be true of Dublin. We talked to our neighbors about goat-sitting while we were gone, we talked to some friends about taking Dublin and the babies to their house, we talked to other friends willing to come up as part of a rotating goat-care system, we found a potential housesitter who could stay at our place and take care of the animals... But somehow, being home every 4-6 hours for feeding, waking up in the middle of the night, muscling a mama goat to let babies nurse and to force pain meds into her mouth, bottle feeding, eventually making a decision of whether or not to keep forcing the nursing or just go to full bottle feeding, and noticing if Dublin started going downhill or getting infected and needing to go back to the vet, plus feeding all the other animals just seemed like too much to leave.

So we cancelled our trip. Well, we postponed it to September. And we stayed home. It was the right decision, certainly, but it was a little sad. I think I had been looking forward to a change of scenery, to some humid heat instead of dry heat, etc etc. But in any case, eventually Dublin started feeling a little better. She just wasn't on our 5-day time schedule. Eventually she got to like one of the babies (the one who didn't go for the bottle). Both babies got stronger and more aggressive about seeking her out and trying to feed. And after some more forced confinement, both babies were nursing, Dublin was even encouraging it.

Mike's bro/sis-in-law/nephew came to visit for the weekend, and we decided everyone was settled enough that we shouldn't have to wake up in the middle of the night anymore to feed. Until 3am... when there was a big gust of wind and a loud scraping noise. We had had Dublin and babies in the kennel, and had put a tarp over the top to provide a little shade during the day. But the evening turned windy and one big gust turned the tarp into a sail and carried the 7 x 13 foot (heavy!) chain link kennel over our 5 foot fence and deposited it on the driveway. This, if you recall, had happened once before, but with a more comprehensive tarp and no animals inside. This time Dub & babies had their house taken out from around them (but they were no worse for the wear) and upon landing, the kennel broke.

So much for no mid-night-wakeups, we moved the mama and babies into the barn, and in the morning fixed the kennel and set them all up again, this time without a tarp. By now they are all pretty well settled. As of today, we are back to a bit of bottle feeding as mama doesn't seem to be producing quite enough milk. So we'll see what happens there. But everyone is healthy and doing well.

Meanwhile, this definitely means that we are revising our Ed strategy. At this point, our buck is related to two of our does and created c-sections in the other two. We got in touch with a few people to see if anyone wanted a buck. So far no go. So we may take him to the vet and have him become a wether (castrated) like Cle, as really there's not much for him to do at our place but cause trouble. And the levels of trouble have been increasing. It's all normal buck behavior, but he is smelling goatier and goatier, getting more and more aggressive, much stronger, and louder in his yelling. It has become hard for us in the past couple of weeks to get anything done in the chicken coop without him almost literally breaking the fence down to come inside. And with our penchant for travel, we can't really leave that kind of challenge for goat-sitters.

So, we're here for summer. Truth is, I really could have used a little vacation. But, as a consolation, the goat babies are super cute, and after much debate over names (almost naming them after Spain and Netherlands after the two teams playing the World Cup soccer final the day they were born), I present to you Ernie and Bert.