Twins at Midnight

I was just dozing off watching Saturday Night Live after stuffing the wood stove and snuggling down under the down comforter. Suddenly there was a different noise coming out of the baby monitor on top of the TV. A goat was making noise, not a night-time noise, but several loud baaaas. Then I heard the unmistakable baby cries. Don't know if I would have heard it had it been ten minutes later and I was sound asleep. I jumped up, got all my gear including two tiny angora/wool baby sweaters that had shrunk from many washings over the years. Angora goat kids are much smaller than lambs, and, if they are twins, they are very tiny. I tiptoed out into the barn and listened. I never burst into the barn, as I don't want to stampede the flock and trample babies. There was a cloud of steam rising all the way to the back and then there was Chris, my llama, standing over the wet steaming bundles, with his nose down, checking them out, saying hello I will take care of you. It was such a lovely scene,and disturbing to realize what the cold would have done to them had I not gotten to them in time. I waited until mom had done some licking of the birth fluids but I wasn't worried. She was talking to them already and they were talking back through the membranes that covered their faces. I scooped them up and walked them into a pen closer to the middle of the barn where it's warmer. My towel was saturated from them and I rubbed them with paper towels. While they were still damp I put their sweaters on. God Bless these sweaters. By the time I was done working on them I put my hand under the sweater and it was toasty warm. You don't have to burn your barn down with heaters if you put sweaters on your babies. And you can't tell me moleskin or polar fleece is as warm as wool blended with angora or alpaca/llama. Anyway, Mom was not happy about me being in the pen on the floor with her babies. She pulled bits of my hair, and made mock bites on my hands. I told her I was just trying to keep her babies alive for her, but it didn't help. She did let me dip the cords in iodine and was somewhat cooperative when I leaned her up against the wall and nursed a nice jar of colostrum out. I wasn't easy finding those tiny teats under the forest of mohair. The babies gurgled and sputtered but I got their bellies full with my little 3 cc. syringe. They became drunk with the warm gooey fluid and went right back to sleep. I placed them in the corner of the pen and went to get hay out of the mow. The hay mow kitties wondered why I was climbing the ladder in the middle of the night. I knew I had to feed the whole flock or they would break down the new mom's pen to get her hay. So everybody had a midnight snack! Mom drank an entire bucket of warm molasses water in one continuous drink! I knew she would make milk after filling up with that sweet water, filled with iron and sugar. I piled a mound of hay on the babies and prayed I had done enough to get them through the night. This morning I found two tiny bouncing babes - one little black girl (my favorite!) and one white boy. I think the doe kid had been nursing as one of mom's udders was empty. Matt helped me get mom trimmed so the babes can find the teats. I got mom wormed (birth stimulates parasites) and everybody got their selenium shots as per Dr. Rachel's instructions. Matt and I have a lot of work to do today, building pens and trimming pregnant goats. He is leaving for a week's OSHA training in Rochester. I know, I know, just when the barn is filled with pregnant animals! I'll do the best I can...