Farm life is hard. I know I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it. And some of the difficult things lead to amazing beauty and connection and joy, but some of them lead to sadness, trauma, tears, and sleepless nights.
I’ll start with the beauty because that’s where our day began yesterday. We’ve had our pregnant girls in the birthing shed each night so they are safely away from the other goats and so that we can monitor them individually on the barn cameras. Every morning they walk (a funny spectacle when they’re that wide) to the pasture where the other goats are. Yesterday they ran down but as soon as we were finishing up with farm chores I noticed they wanted back out. They willingly ran back to the shed, not their norm, and then they both showed signs of early labor. The pawing, the up and down, and noises. I was *pretty* sure this was real this time but Bridget had fooled us so many times this week I was having a few doubts. But she seemed to be progressing quite well…these early signs started around 9:30am and went on for a while and then by early afternoon she started pushing. Now as a backstory on Bridget, she’s our Mini Nubian and last year she had two beautiful bucklings that are polled and blue eyed.
It turned out she had had twin bucklings the year before as well (before we had her). And I believe she might have even had twin bucklings her first freshening the year before that. The reason we decided to breed her again this year for a final time before retiring her is that she is our easiest milker and she doesn’t have huge “litters” like her sister, Dolly, who last year gave us quads and the two years before that had triplets. We don’t like a lot of babies because it’s more risk for the moms and babies and more milk going to goats and not to us. But Dolly was so fun to watch with her four and we did love the experience because it all went so smoothly. She nursed all of them without ever needing any extra from us. But we agreed to retire her last year because our breeder friend had a Mini Nubian who always had big “litters” (I don’t really know what to call it when they have so many, ha!) and her last freshening she ended up having sextuplets. She needed a C-section. Four babies survived. The mama did not. And that story has haunted me. So I decided Bridget was our safer bet for Mini Nubians (actually we bred for Mini NuManchas this year) since she’d always had twins. She ended up being a similar size this year to what she was last year but part of me kept thinking she would have triplets. My goat friends all guessed she was having twins so I stopped mentioning my hunch and stopped really believing it myself.
So around 2:30 she pushed out a DOELING. Imagine our surprise after all the bucklings she’s had! She is a beautiful long-eared (!!) sweetheart with blue eyes.
I do not believe she is polled but she could surprise us. Last year we could tell right away with the babies. And we LOVE horns so we aren’t set on them being polled but if we sell them the polled are definitely easier to sell. We promised both does that they could keep a baby this year because our other does last year got to keep 1-2 with them (one is still nursing her twins who are a year old this month!) and these ladies didn’t get to keep any. So we told them they could keep at least one each and also that they would retire, which is very young to retire goats as most people seem to breed them annually until they are 8 or so. Ours are 4 years old. It just feels right. I mean, think of Dolly who has had 3+3+3+4. That’s a lot of offspring!
Anyway, we waited after the doeling was born for another baby. And we waited and waited and waited. Last year all five of our does had textbook perfect labors and births. What was going on? You’re supposed to only wait 30 minutes between babies before you intervene. We waited 40 because we really, really, REALLY did not want to “go in.” We never had to last year. This seemed a little scary, though of course we’d read the books and had an idea of what to do. Christine sort of defaulted to helping the babies come out this year; I don’t know why because we never totally discussed this and I’m more comfortable with moms than babies. But it just happened that she went for it. I think too she knows how freaked out I get (I am TERRIBLE in emergencies, as in non-functional). She felt around inside and didn’t feel anything but somehow that got Bridget pushing harder and so the next thing we know there’s a second baby, a cute little buckling with tiny LaMancha ears like his daddy. We let Bridget bond and lick (by then the doeling was completely dry and bouncing all about) him and it was time for me to run to the bus to get my daughter. I got her quickly, brought her back inside, and before I could even get her snack together I heard Christine screaming for me from the shed. I ran over there and she says something about another baby had come out but then there was another. I didn’t really understand what she was saying, I thought she was just saying there was another coming out, so I walked in to find a baby halfway out. I help that one out, and then I look up by Bridget’s face to see three babies, not just the two I’d seen before! Two more doelings, both with short ears. Quads again! All four have blue eyes and the three with short ears look very similar, though the last one was a bit skinnier than the others.
Wow, I can’t believe we ended up with quads again. Bridget Girl, three doelings! You have redeemed yourself but also have made us happy about our decision to retire you. Four is just too many. Bridget loves all her babies, but interestingly the last born went the whole day not liking her mom! Every time Bridget would come over to lick her she would walk away and stand by herself or walk over to us. Also a quirk with her is that she literally refused to lay down all afternoon. She was so tired she would fall asleep standing up and fall over but then she’d get up again. She *could* lay down; we would hold her on our laps with her legs out just fine. The legs aren’t tight.
She just would have a panic any time her bottom would hit the ground. (In the wee hours of the morning we pushed the baby into a laying position and then she decided to stay there and totally collapsed from exhaustion.
Today she’s back to standing, LOL.)
But all babies drank fine and seem healthy and in spite of my panics about Bridget stepping on them (she runs into the gate for goodness sakes when she goes through it; she doesn’t seem to have good body awareness) she has been very careful.
Meanwhile Kissy was still not progressing too much more but we weren’t worried; labor can take time and we seem to catch our goats at the very first sign of anything, maybe even more so because we’re energy sensitive and can feel the shifts occurring (hence all of the false alarms that were probably still subtle shifts in the right direction).
After dinner we hung out on and off with Kissy and then late (I don’t even remember the time, maybe 10 or so?) she started progressing quicker. She started pushing, but what I noticed was that the pushing didn’t do anything at all, almost like she was too tired to really give a good effort. It felt like the pushing energy didn’t get down to her vagina, it just stopped somewhere in the middle of her body. I became concerned but we left her to it. I started messaging a goat vet community online and a woman made it her priority to help me through it all. After 30 minutes she told me we needed to go in because at that point it clearly meant a baby was positioned wrong and couldn’t be pushed out. We might have cursed a little. Christine immediately took over with the elbow length gloves and more cursing. We buttered up the glove with coconut oil which is great lube and also antibacterial and antimicrobial and then she went in. She couldn’t feel anything. At all. And I had this stupid thought, what if she’s not really pregnant and she’s just convinced herself she is? Because she didn’t seem that big and because Christine didn’t feel anything. I know it’s stupid but it was late and I’m not a night person and I was in a complete panic. I was messaging the goat person online, “She can’t feel anything!” and she would give some suggestions and Christine kept having to feel around some more. Mind you, this goat was miserable with this and kept getting up, moving away, flopping down…it just felt so awful. I tried to keep Kissy calm and hold her still but she’s a very strong goat (did you know goats can pull 200% of their weight safely?) and I could only do so much. She finally, finally felt something. A head and one leg. Somehow she got the baby out safely. Christine cursed some more, threw the glove down, and basically we went into shock together and a mix of panic coming out and relief and gratitude to have a baby that was alive through all that. And worried for Kissy because it was a lot for her. And then relief when Kissy perked up and loved that baby with her whole heart and dried him off and cooed at him as only goat mamas can because they love their babies so much (another reason I could never run a goat dairy where I rip the babies away from the mothers…how do they do that? And what kind of milk does that create when science proves our emotions go into what we make, whether it’s milk or food we are cooking or the glass of water in our hands. Sad milk. The kind that most people drink regularly from the grocery store. Or your local farm. Because unless you’re a homesteader you do not get happy milk, I can guarantee it.).
So back to the birth—Kissy starts pawing and pushing again and it’s the same thing all over again. No movement forward. No swelling vulva. No energy coming down and out. And I run to message goat help online again and Christine is saying “no, how can this be possible that this is happening again?” And we are both fkg terrified. I mean, about in tears and panic and exhaustion because at this point it’s well after midnight and we’ve been dealing with goat labors for 15 hours. The goat help says yes, we need to go back in, so Christine dawns another elbow length glove and goes in again. She finds a head with no legs. No legs at all. And then the head comes out. Oh God. A head with no legs. And the goat help is saying “You’ve got to go in, you can’t birth a goat in that position.” And Christine reaches further and further in while the head is sticking out and Kissy is miserable and she’s standing and falling and oh, it was just so much. And she lays down again. And Kissy is crying, screaming, tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth, writhing in pain, and I’m just crying and holding her head and petting her and telling her she’s a good girl and we won’t let anything happen to her and we’re taking good care of her and then I’m saying to Christine who is also crying “You’re doing so good, you’re doing so good, you’ve almost got it, just find the legs and bring them forward.” And she’s saying “I can’t! I can’t find the legs at all!” And the lady messaging me is saying “Follow the shoulders” And I’m just hearing the clock tick in my head with this goat with it’s head out and breathing compromised and watching my own mama goat, my favorite goat, my first goat ever, suffering, and I just want to run away and block it all out and forget, but instead I stay there and I talk nicely to both of them and I encourage Christine some more to keep looking for the legs and finally, FINALLY, she finds them and then next thing I know this long beautiful baby is out. And it’s all floppy, it’s neck is flat, and I’m like “okay she’s dead” but Christine says no, and we get towels and we rub the heck out of that baby and we suction her out and she lays there all limp. And Christine shoves her in front of Kissy and Kissy coos to her and licks her and life comes back into this baby goat. Within a minute she lifts her head. And I think we are all crying but I don’t know because it was 1am or so and it’s all a blur. And I see all the blood coming out of my favorite mama goat and I cry and I run and get the shepherd’s purse tincture and I give her a lot; I have no idea how much to give but I don’t want to under dose. And Christine and I both have to just sit because we’re still in panic and all the emotions and the whole bit of it…it was a nightmare. And then Kissy sort of pushes again and I freak out, I might have even started screaming, “No, OMG, what if there are more! I CAN’T DO THIS AGAIN!!!” And I literally can’t. And I know that Christine can’t either. We just don’t have anything left to give. But she kind of stops pushing. And the goat lady is messaging me, “go in and feel for another baby” And I tell her “NO, I’m sorry, we are not putting this goat through more of that and we can’t go in again at all. I’m leaving her alone.” And then I realize I can’t do more but I also can’t leave the shed. So Christine goes to the house and gets blankets and hats and extra pants and a heater and we sleep for the next hour and a half in Adirondack chairs in the cold shed with the heat partially on us and partially on the new babies, though they have nice jackets to keep them warm, too. Still, I freeze. I wake up at some point to hear Christine telling me the placenta has come out. Thank God, one less thing to worry about. I wake up another time to find a baby missing until I see it curled up sleeping in Christine’s arms. Eventually we went into the house, exhausted, and sleep for a few more hours until it was time to start on farm chores. I canceled all our plans for the day and we deemed it pajama day so that we could lay around and watch movies but also heal and watch over the goats. The babies are big and strong today. One buckling with brown eyes and one doeling with blue, and guess what, two short eared mini LaManchas somehow created a long-eared baby. Don’t ask me how but we only have one buck on our farm, so there just aren’t other possibilities. Genetics are so weird.
Kissy seems good but every little thing worries me—is she eating enough? Has she not pooped this morning? Etc. I’m a worrier and I wish I wasn’t because I know it doesn’t help, but telling someone not to worry is just a waste of breath. I love my farm and I love my family which includes my animals. Losing Kissy would be devastating. And I’m well aware of the fact that we are not out of the hot water yet with her. We are giving her colloidal silver as an antibiotic along with garlic, ginger, oregano oil, clove oil, and herbal wormers. I don’t see any tears on the outside and her bleeding stopped shortly after the births and so that part is good, but we are holding our breath still.
I cried this morning in the shower. I cried for us having to go through that ordeal, I cried for Kissy because it was all so painful for her and because I’m so scared for her. I cried for the woman who sold her to us who lost her favorite goat with that sextuplet birth. I cried for my Facebook friend who lost her mama goat and the goat’s triplets this past week. I cried because I have so much emotion in me from all of this. So much love, so much sadness, so much gratitude, so much exhaustion and it goes on and on.
Please pray for our goat. She means so much to me. And I’d like to close by saying thank you to Christine who helped Kissy in ways I was not able to and was brave and strong and held it together and miraculously saved those three lives in that moment. I am so incredibly grateful.
