Empress and Tokyo

Empress is due in a 6 days and Tokyo in 10!!
Both are filling their udders, Tokyo more so than Empress.
Empress's little udder so far

Tokyo's udder is looking great! Super excited to see this girl's babies and what she looks like in milk. Hoping for a single doe.
I had her up on the stand last week for a kidding clip and I went ahead and gave her a full body clip.

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Waiting patiently(not!) for the second round of kidding to begin. I'm ready to see my FFs in milk and for some more cute babies:)

March 15, 2016

Remember what I said about appreciating quick easy deliveries with no complications?
Well I was reminded of that again when Della went into labor on March 12. 9 days early.
The strange thing was that she was only on Day 141. The day before, she had barely filled her udder at all and wasn't showing any signs of kidding soon. Which was to be expected since she was still 10 days out. We weren't sure why she was in labor but she came up on the stand to eat that morning and her udder was full and she had amber goo.
I hadn't anticipated kids that soon so nothing was ready. We got a kidding pen cleaned out for her and got all the kidding supplies together and I sat down to wait for kids.
After a while I decided she had been in labor too long with nothing happening. So I went in, and a found a nose, but no feet. I soon realized that the nose didn't feel quite right and upon further examination I discovered that the kid was upside down with BOTH feet back. Great. I finally managed to turn the kid around a bit and get the head out. 
As soon as the head was out I suspected that it was dead. It took me a little to find the legs but once I found them I was able to get the kid into the correct position. By this point poor Della was exhausted and therefore wasn't really up to pushing so I had to pull the kid out myself. It took longer than normal to get the kid out since Della wasn't pushing much, but I eventually got it out and confirmed that it was dead. It looked to have been dead at least since yesterday or maybe last night. It was a gorgeous Cou Blanc doe kid. Taxman's first baby.

Della had been enormous before kidding, I had thought she must have at least big twins in there but I checked her again and found NO MORE KIDS. I was shocked. How in the world did she only have ONE baby in there?

I was very disappointed that I didn't get a live kid out of this breeding, but at least Della's doing fine. She had a very rough birth and it took her 14 hours and a few doses of Oxytocin before she finally passed the placenta but she's doing OK (other than being quite swollen)
Hopefully she can go back out with the herd soon.

Well, Della was Doe #8 which means that all of the Senior Does have kidded and it's time to start on the FFs. I have 6  due in the nest 2.5 months.
On Friday I clipped the ones closest to kidding and took pictures of their adorable little udders:D

Empress is due April 6(22 days)



Tokyo  is due April 10(26 days)



Empress is bred to Adonis, and Tokyo to Google. I plan to retain doe kids out of both of them.

Both are Oreo's daughters, and Tokyo will be my first Adonis daughter to freshen so I'm super excited to how they milk and what their udders look like!

Praying for doelings and easy kiddings with no complications.
I've had 5 kids born DOA this year and I'm ready for some easier births.

Herd Queen

Tansy says hi!

And she also says “I am your mother, your boss and your herd queen so you better listen to me!”

That’s true, mostly, she is the boss, and the herd queen and she is mother, or grandmother, or great grandmother to most of my herd.

Tansy was my first goat, along with her sidekick, Poppy, back in 2009. She was 3 then. That was 7 years ago, which means Tansy(or Old T as we call her) is 10 y/o old now!

I’d say she’s doing pretty good for a 10 year old doe. This year she kidded for the 10th time. She’s still boss, with no sign of being overthrown anytime soon, in fact, I think she’ll be Herd Queen till the day she dies. It is her self appointed title and I think she plans to take it to the grave with her.

She is milking about 10 lbs a day right now, at just past a month fresh. She kidded so fast this year that I completely missed it! I came to check on her and she proudly presented me with twin does!

Her kidding record, since I have had her is:

2010-Twin Does

2011-Buck/doe

2012-Buck/doe

2013-Buck/Doe

2014-Single buck

2015-Single doe

​2016- Twin Does

So in 7 freshenings that’s 12 kids; 8 does and 4 bucks

Her first kids were twin does, the first goats ever born on our farm.

Oreo and Starlight we named them. We lost Starlight as a 2 y/o FF due to a broken leg.

Oreo is now 6 years old and I am very pleased with her. She has excellent conformation and a gorgeous udder. Her sire was Bearly Black Hawk Esk.

That fall she was bred to a buck I very much dislike and had buck/doe twins

She had a cute little chammy doeling named Sunflower and a chammy buck who I don’t remember anything about. I’m trying to remember his name but nothing is coming to mind.

The next year her kids were sired by the same buck, with the same results. A doe, Pansy,  and and buck kid named Ramses. Apparently her previous owner also named one of her doe kids Pansy, so Tansy has 2 daughters with the same name:)

In 2012 I bred her to a buck that I now own, Cherry Glen Gentry Google. Again she had buck/doe twins. Her buck Cedar was an enormous broken chamoise, that’s really all I remember about him. She had a beautiful doeling named Dogwood. Sadly, we lost her that fall due to heavy parasite infestation that we didn’t catch quick enough.

In 2013, I owned a very obnoxious, highly annoying mixed breeds buck(mostly Boer) that was rather prone to fence jumping. One way or another he managed to get to Tansy when she was in heat and we decided not to lute her but let her carry the kid(s) instead. In 2014 she delivered a large, rather ugly single buckling. He has since moved on. We had planned to butcher him(we ate his brother but never got around to killing him) so we never bothered to disbud him and I had to be very careful who I housed him with since he had a pair of very long sharp horns and had learned exactly how to use them. There really was no conceivable purpose to having him around and he was a BIG pain in the butt! In the fall of 2014, I purchased my beautiful Alpine buck from Busy-B&D farm and bred everyone to him. That breeding resulted in a very pretty single doeling, Twist&Shout. Tansy’s ONLY doe kid ever born here that was not a Chamoisee!!!

I considered retiring her after that kid, but she was still going strong so I repeated the breeding that produced Twist and on January 29, 2016 she delivered twin does!!! Yep, both chammys again but at least she mixed it up a bit, giving me one doe that was a very dark chamoisee(colored a lot like her granddam, Amanda) and the other very light, almost white at birth. As of now, I plan to retain both of them, and Twist will be freshening NEXT MONTH! I’m so excited to see her udder!

With losing Emerald last month, and part of the combination that killed her being a severely infected eye, I started thinking back to when that had happened before.

Tansy was the first one. By the time we took her into the vet she had gone blind in one eye.  Her eye was pretty bad and the vet said we’d most likely have to take it out.

She sent us home with Terramycin to put in her eye twice a day and said call if/when it got worse. It never did, in fact she completely regained sight in that eye, which was very surprising but I was also grateful for! Now you can’t tell anything was ever wrong with it. I have since learned to keep Terramycin on hand all the time, it is a very valuable medicine that I don’t want to be without!

To show how many goats we have/had in our herd descending from Tansy, I am going to post pictures of as many of then as I can find...so get ready for a lot of pictures:)

Tansy's 8 Merry Oaks doe kids- 
2010 Does-
Starlight, the first born, was put down as a 2 y/o FF after she broke her leg, and I only have 1 picture of her that I can find, looks like she was a kid then.

Oreo

2011 Doe-

Sunflower

2012 Doe-

Pansy

2013 Doe-

Dogwood

2015 Doe-

Twist

2016 Does

Dove

Dancer

Daughters' kids  

Oreo babies

Emerald

 

2014 Doe 

Empress

2014 Buck

Elm

 

2015 Doe kids

Tokyo

Swamp

 2016 Bucks

Boromir

Faramir

Sunflower's kids

2014 Doe

2014 Buck

2015 Buck

2015 Buck

Pansy's kids

2014 Buck kid

Great-Grandkids.

Emerald's 2013 Doe, Peach

2014 Bucks

Elder~

Ebony-He is working in the Green T herd now and you can see  current pictures of him and his kids on their website.

2015 Bucks

Bullet

TNT

And this year she had buck/doe twins.

Bad Man

Penny Lane

Birch's 2015 Doe

Dreamer

Elm, Elder, Ebony, Bullet, Boromir, Faramir and Bad Man are or will be breeding bucks in other herds.

Born on my farm Tansy has(If I'm counting correctly)

39 Direct descendants.

From life's first cry to final breath

Feb 27, 2016
The last time I checked Oreo was 3 AM, she is 6 y/o and her labors tend to be pretty fast...so I crawled out of bed at 5 AM, dragged myself down the barn and ducked into the kidding pen where Oreo gave a final push and deposited a kid at my feet. 
No way that's a doe, I thought, as I started drying it off. I cleared the sack off his head, confirmed that it was indeed a buck kid, finished rubbing him off and handed him to a sibling. 
I slipped out of the pen to check on Emerald and found she was much, much worse than last night. It was obvious she was in a lot of pain and she was now very weak. Her previously infected eye was completely dead now and it didn't look like there was much we could do for her. That was extremely discouraging as the previous day we'd had a very positive vet visit and she was alert, happy and still eating. Our vet gave us a lot of hope for her, as we hadn't been too sure she'd pull through from whatever was going on. We aren't sure exactly what all was going on with her, I still have no idea what it was(most likely a combination of things) but never in my life have I seen a goat go downhill so fast. Just yesterday afternoon she jumped into the van and stood up the entire way to the vet and all the way home. Last night she hopped eagerly on to the stand to be milked. Now she couldn't even sit up and was in terrible pain. From what, I don't know.
I had checked Oreo and found another kid not too far in, but she hadn't started pushing yet, so I ran back and forth between Oreo and Emerald's pen, keeping an eye on Oreo and trying to make Emerald comfortable.
Finally she started pushing again, so I grabbed a towel and caught the next kid as it shot out. I dried off a second large kid(not a surprise from Oreo) and groaned as I realized it was another buck. Really Oreo, at least one doe would have been nice after all that and shivering my way down to the barn every 2 hours all night long to check you.
But no, she had twin does last year so this year just had to be twin bucks. I checked to make sure Oreo wasn't hiding any more babies and then found someone to take the second kid while I went back to Emerald. I propped her up, made her comfortable, gave her some Banamine for pain and stayed with her, holding her head up and and keeping her calm.
My brother came and took my place with Emerald so I could go milk out Oreo and feed the boys. 
As usual Oreo gave a LOT of colostrum. It's good to have her in milk again and I would have enjoyed milking her had I not been rushing to get back to Emerald. 
I filled a couple bottles and set them in hot water to warm them up a bit then turned my attention to the new kids. As much as I wished they were does I couldn't help admiring what nice kids they were. They'll make someone nice herdsires someday. The first kid is a really pretty broken chamoise, he was the biggest and weighed in at 10 lbs. His brother is also very pretty, he's colored like Tansy's doeling, Dancer, which I think is a very pretty color. He was 9 lbs, so a little smaller than his brother but a pretty good size. I got colostrum into them and gave them to my younger siblings while I went back out to Emerald.

I stayed with Emerald until the end, and she passed later that morning. 
RIP My beautiful Emerald:( You can read her post here, I don't want to try and put anything else about her into this post, but I'll post some happy pictures of the newest additions!

I had names picked out for them but the younger kids were insistent that they be Boromir and Faramir so that's what they are. It fits them anyway!
Boromir, the oldest one.

And his brother, Faramir

So, for the most part a sad day:( 
But it is nice to have new babies around. And although they are both boys, if there is one thing I've learned to be grateful for in the past couple months it's quick, easy kiddings with no complications!