It's That Time of Year Again

It's kidding season and we've had seven babies so far. 

 

Hyacinth had her two black kids like she always does, a boy and a girl - the spitting image of Billy.  And, as usual, her udder is congested and as big as a basketball.  I'm milking her for the colostrom (only getting about a cup) and adding it to the milk I froze from last year and bottle feeding the kids.  I'm also trying to get them to nurse as often as possible so they won't be totally dependent on the bottle.

The following picture is gross, so if you can't take gross, close your eyes and scroll down.

 

I'm posting it because it is also pretty cool.  Nephew Jordan happened to be in the barn when Hyacinth went into labor and he alerted me.  We were able to watch the kids being born.  Jordan took video with his phone.  If you want to see better, click on the picture to make it bigger.  What you're looking at is the head of the second kid coming out of the birth canal.  You can see that it's head is still completely enclosed in the sac and it's eyes are open and little tongue kind of sticking out.  It stayed like this for several minutes.  I actually was getting a little nervous about it because I sure didn't want to have to go in there and assist.  She finally did pop it out all at once, thank goodness.

And here are Pansy's triplets.  She was still cleaning them up this morning when I went into the barn, so they had just arrived.

 This is the boy.  He's a big 'un.

This one's a girl.  Isn't she a doll?  She must have been first because she was all cleaned up.

 

Another girl.  I thought she was black at first, but when she got mostly cleaned up, it turns out she looks very much like her sister.

We have three does to go.  Hopefully, they'll all be done kidding within the next couple of days.