A World Walkabout: Kidding

Baby goats, or kids, are hard not to love. Like small dogs (or sometimes not so small) they enjoy human companionship, especially when hand reared. Usually this is not something we’ve done, hand rearing or bottle feeding. For one, it’s a lot of extra work heating bottles and delivering them multiple times throughout the day. Usually, we just let the momma goat do her job and provide the milk. Which they would have done in this case, but in this case things didn’t go as they usually do. With all the research we’ve done, it seems there are many complications that can happen when a goat gives birth, or is kidding, as its called. And we are here to tell you, that this is in fact true...but, this story does have a happy ending, for the universe works in mysteriously serendipitous ways.

Getting to see these two boys be born and grow was a great experience. After loosing their mother a few days after birth, they relied on us (for bottles) and later their Auntie Blue Bell for milk. Blue Bell was a first time freshener and lost her babies prematurely, but luckily for us, she was still producing ’some’ milk. The process of her adopting the boys would ultimately take a couple weeks, and a lot of persistence and motivation (including fig newton treats :)) from all of us. Today the boys are healthy and loved. They are two little goaties, that won’t be little long, who we will never forget.