guest column

We knew an “about” date for my youngest’s goat to give birth. The goat, Cream, led us on for a bit, but just wasn’t as ready as we were for her to give birth. We watched for signs of her being close to giving birth almost daily, as my youngest hoped to watch. The Sunday before last, I noticed her bag had looked much fuller and other changes in her back end looked like she couldn’t hold out too much longer. We milked cows the next morning, and I popped in her pen afterwards to witness some normal pregnancy goo. More promising, but nothing to get my youngest out of bed for. After my youngest fed her bucket calf, we popped back in the pen, and we were just in time to see her losing her mucus plug! Now we knew it was actually close to baby time. We did our normal morning routine, but someone went out every 30 minutes with a walkie talkie to give an update. I got a lot more than just goat birthing updates when my youngest went out, heck, she even let Cream bleat into the walkie talkie as well as her duckling, Taffy. Thirty minutes later, it was my son’s turn to go out, so he grabbed the walkie talkie and ran out. In no time at all our walkie talkie was lit up with his urgent voice saying she had the babies. I replied with a “are you kidding”, as it wouldn’t be the first time he had joked about it. Nope, he said one was literally just born, still partly in the sac. My youngest and I went to the barn to witness two little kids partly dry, standing on wobbling legs and another on the ground, wet as can be with the sac partly covering it. It didn’t take mama Cream long to give it attention and get it cleaned up like the other two. The kids, ahem, my kids, sat and watched in wonder as the last one tried to stand up for the first time, failing, and trying again. They watched and encouraged the babies to drink from mama and were so happy when all three had successfully sucked. I was silently relieved, as I didn’t really want a bottle baby goat at the time. They eat way more often than a baby calf and would have greatly limited my sleep when my youngest decided she couldn’t handle it anymore, but maybe she would have surprised me, thankfully we won’t find out this time! Mama is keeping up great with all three of them! We were pretty shocked at the number she had, three is normal, but two is definitely the typical number. My youngest is completely thrilled to have three babies to raise and play with. Mama Cream seemed pretty put out with trying to pay attention to each of them while we watched her. She’d turn to one, then turn to another, then another, just looking from one to the next, not knowing which one to go to as they were all spread out and kept moving around. A tad overwhelming I’d say. I called homeschool off for the rest of the day, this beautiful life moment was enough along with what we had already done. My youngest made one trip into the house for a water bottle, snacks, books, and a blanket and I didn’t see her the entire afternoon unless I went to the barn.