Velvet (here pictured with her lamb friend, Bridie) are my constant companions. Velvet is under my chair as I type this post. She is a twin and Celeste's doe kid. I found her lying flat and lifeless in the pen. Celeste is getting on in years now, and I wonder if she just decided she could only handle one. That's unlikely, however, since she raised triplets beautifully on her own last year. Whatever the reason, Velvet spent a few nights on the oven door keeping warm and being tube fed. I mistakenly thought she was a buck kid and was thrilled to find she's a girl! Mia babysat over the weekend and fell in love with Velvet, who ran across the field and jumped in her arms. How could you resist? I'm including a picture of Celeste with Velvet's twin sister. I wonder if little Velvet feels badly about her mother favoring the twin. I doubt it since I keep her little belly full of warm milk replacer three times a day. She seems happy with the flock and is growing into a lovely, healthy doe.
Sometimes I wonder, too, why a mother will abandon one kid or lamb and keep another. Maybe the stress of birthing just wipes them out too much to be able to handle the additional baby at the moment. Of course they must know that once the decision is made to abandon, the baby is lost, so they immediately wipe that maternal attachment away? Just a theory...I guess they never will be able to tell us in a way that we will understand.
ReplyDelete