Two New Kids

Two New Kids

 

      The wee little goats have adjusted to life in the cold barn. Cherry gave birth to two boy goats last Thursday afternoon around 5 p.m. They’re adorable, waggly tails and all…

    Two years ago I looked for a home for the overflow of chickens that we had from the Lake County spring hatch. Calls to several homeschool families led me to a family near Rockford, Illinois who raised goats. Elizabeth wanted a goat badly and prayed at the New Year (2005) for one. Last fall out of the kindness of their hearts, the Beatty family gave us a beautiful Nubian female goat named Cherry and a young white goat named Flicka to keep her company over the winter. Goats are very social animals and need the companionship of another goat to keep them happy. As an added bonus, the Beattys mated Cherry, telling us she would give birth in the spring.

     I wasn’t really paying attention and haven’t had time to read very much of the goat book that they loaned to us. But when I realized that Cherry was probably due any time, my internal mommy alarm went off, and I started to panic. Robert called the Beattys and found out that Cherry was due on St. Patrick’s Day. We had one week to try and find out what having goat babies is all about.

     Being a firm believer in letting nature taking its course, I hoped that having baby goats wouldn’t be much different from having baby chicks. They peck though their shells and are eating and drinking in no time at all. But as I read the goat book it appeared that having baby goats was going to be a lot more complicated. In fact, the people who wrote the book didn’t let their babies nurse because of a disease that causes goat arthritis. They even went so far as to feed their babies pasteurized milk. I was not happy thinking about the inconvenience that baby goats might cause. Robert called the Beattys and said, “Lordy, lordy Miss Scarlet, I don’t know nothing about birthin’ no goat babies.” He talked to Mrs. Beatty for a few minutes and then our phone battery died from lack of charging. It was a few more days before we were able to talk to Beth (the Beatty’s daughter and the girl who is in charge of all the goats on their farm). She assured me that their goats were disease free and that we could let the kids nurse naturally.            

     Last Thursday was snowy and cold, about 30 degrees. I checked Cherry several times for signs of contractions. I thought I saw her have one, but after talking with Beth I decided that I mistakenly attributed human contractions with Cherry’s sides heaving in and out. Goats supposedly scrunch up their backs when they are having contractions.

     I was in my bedroom working on The Gift of Family Writing and I kept thinking, I’ll go and check Cherry as soon as I’m done. Just as I finished up Robert came running in the house yelling, “It’s twins, it’s twins. Cherry had her babies!” She decided to have her babies a day early after all.

     We all rushed out to the barn and there in the hay lay the cutest little brown babies with waggly tails that you ever saw. We rubbed them down with towels and just as we got them nice and dry, Cherry would lick them again. We all took turns helping one of the babies nurse for the first four days. He is a little smaller than his brother, but he is doing fine now.

    Today the girls let them outside into the poultry/goat pen for the first time. “Out into the wide, wide world,” as Anna put it.

    Robert said today, “What good are male goats anyway?”

   “Entertainment,” I said.

The little girls played half the day with their new babies and I’ll be expecting some journal entries real soon about the latest additions to our Pebbly Brook menagerie.