Bolt & Tempest

My little sister’s birthday was yesterday! She turned 6. And, being the well brought up little farm kid that she is, she asked me if she could have a goat for her birthday. Good request kid! That’s something I can do;) It just so happened that I had a couple goats due to kid right around her birthday. Empress was due April 6th and Tokyo April 10th. Up until Tuesday it hasn’t looked like I would end up with a goat kidding on the 7th. Empress was taking her own sweet time filling her udder and had no signs of kidding within the next couple days. However, on Day 150 I noticed that she was acting different, she was very sweet and friendly and just wanted to hang out with people which was very odd for her. And then, yesterday morning I realized my little sister would  get her birthday goat after all when Empress came into the barn with a full udder and no ligs. She had progressed very quickly over the past 12 hours! So I put her in the kidding stall and checked her every hour. Nothing until about 2:45 that afternoon she had some goo. Yay! Progress. At 3:45 she had a LOT of goo. And when I entered the barn at 4:45 she had a massive stream of goo and I could see 2 hooves starting to peek out!!  As soon as I got in the pen and grabbed a hold of the front hooves she pushed, another and the head was out, one more and I pulled a wet, and very alive baby into the towel I was holding. I checked to see what it was and was disappointed to see it was a buck. Fortunately, I was fairly certain he wasn’t a single, way too small for a single buck kid. Sure enough, Empress soon lifted her head and stopped licking the first baby. I yelled for my sister to grab the first baby and get him out of the pen, so she handed me a clean towel, wrapped up Baby A and took him out of them pen. All it took was one push and the second baby slid out on the the towel I had waiting for it. As I dried it off I lifted a hind leg to see what it was...a doe! I would have been very disappointed if it was another buck. We got both kids cleaned up and dried off before weighing them and filling out birth records. That was the easiest delivery we’ve had here in awhile! Empress did better than some of the older does *ahem* Clematis. Point being that even some of the older does can really be drama queens sometimes, and act like they’re deing. One thing about difficult deliveries, malpositioned kids and DOAs is that it really makes you appreciate those easy births where the kids are in the correct position and you can have them out in about 10 seconds. Meet Tempest and Bolt Action! ​ Cora got her birthday goat! ​We surprised her that evening, she loves Tempest to death!