Sunday morning, 7:00am.  The alarm goes off but it’s still dark outside.  The pigs are quiet.  So are the chickens, mostly.  So I hit snooze.

I’m up a little before 8, which is nice–I’ve really slept in.  I look out the bedroom window, looking at the new snow on the ground.  And I start counting legs.  Some of our goats can be seen from the bedroom window.  But it seems like something is wrong because there are too many legs.

!!!

Baby!

Yep.  One of our girls (Greta) delivered.  A lot earlier than we expected.  A month earlier.  *sigh*

The boy looks good, a tail wagger with the cutest voice.

On December 27th, I asked a goat group on Facebook about when my girl would be due.  I had noticed that her udder was getting big (bagging up).  They told me I had about 6 weeks.  This made me happy.  It’s cold right now.  One of our frost-free spigots froze yesterday.  I was happy to hear that she probably wouldn’t deliver until February.  Ugh.

The first thing I did was pull Gertrude out of the pen.  She’s Greta’s sister.  I saw Gert butt the baby and I didn’t want any of that happening.  If I had known that Greta was close, I would have isolated her.  *sigh*

Greta wasn’t nursing.  We took the buckling in and toweled him off.  We tried to give him milk but our calf bottle was a bit much for him.  Dried off and warm, we figured we’d give him another shot with mama.  It looks like he’s nursed a bit.  We’ll keep an eye on him and see if Greta delivers another.

You may have grown up thinking that boy goats are “billies” and girls are “nannies”.  Those aren’t the words used in the world of goats.  Bucks and does (pronounced dough) are grown goats and bucklings and doelings are the young.

That’s all for now.  More cute pics will follow.

Happy 2015!