Thank you all for being patient with me as I struggle to find a rhythm with my blogs in new motherhood. Most days it is all I can do to accomplish our basic care tasks for work, our home, farm and family as a whole. It is rare that I have enough time to sit down and write my thoughts out in our current state of life. But this week was a monumentus occasion. I had to travel for work for the first time since last August. To say I was dreading the trip was an understatement, thankfully, with the help of my husband and several wonderful support people helping to watch Avery and someone helping with some chores while I was gone, things seem to have gone well .
That being said, I want to take you back in time to April 20th. I knew Godiva was due on April 19th, so we had been watching her as a hawk, and as her udder swelled, and her ligaments disappeared on her due date, I knew kids were in our near future. Thankfully, her labor seemed to be progressing normally and my Mom and our sitter that watches Avery for a few hours a week were there, to help with all of the complexity that is our life. As her contractions continued, my mom and I watched, and watched and even after pushing there was no progress so I knew I had to go in to check.
When I went in, I discovered what is perhaps the worst kidding I had helped with to date. I immediately felt cervical rings that were not fully dilated and as I reached further, I saw why, all of the kids were tangled together, I felt feet and legs and heads, and none were presenting properly. So, I took a deep breath and started trying to figure out the puzzle. First came a tiny little doe, black and white with frosted ears, she was tiny but seemed strong and healthy, so I passed her to my mom to dry off and make sure her nose was clean. Next I struggled for what felt like hours, but was likely only minutes to untangle and figure out who's leg and head was next. The next was a HUGE white buck kid with blue eyes he came out gasping for air with meconium all over him, clearly very stressed. I spent quite a bit of time working to get him breathing by sucking his airways out and hanging him upside down to get the fluid out of his lungs. I finally was able to get him to a point where he was breathing on his own and I went in for more, I knew she had at least triplets, likely quads because she was HUGE! So, I went in again and thankfully the last two simply needed a little bit of untangling before they entered the world. Two chocolate bucks with random white and one has blue eyes.
So for those of you keeping track, Godiva has kidded twice and yielded 7 bucks and 1 doe. This is bread to two different bucks..... Godiva was sore, but she got right up to clean the kids and fed and accepted them all. We watched her and gave her meloxicam for a few days and she finally about 4 days after delivery went back onto grain well. I did end up treating her for a metritis since she was off feed for so long. We were thankful that even after a rough kidding we had healthy kids and a healthy momma, or so we thought..... The adventure continues..... come back next week so see what else we have gotten into. Happy Goating!!!
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