Meet the critters #5
This is Dakota. She’s five months old on January 7, 2024.
One Sunday evening back in early August of last year I walked over the hill to check on the sheep and goats in their rotational grazing paddock.
When I peaked into their trailer/portable shelter to see what Clarice was up to I got quite a surprise:
Goat kids!?!?!? In August!?!?!?
Goat kids!?!?!? In August!?!?!?
Until this moment this was not something that was possible in my mind. We were just starting into breeding season. Goat kids are born in January (according to my whopping 2.5 years of small ruminant husbandry experience at that point…)
I checked on Alabama and she was also about to give birth, as she hunkered huffing and puffing under the trailer trying to escape the muggy August heat.
In the few weeks prior I had thought our two nanny goats looked pretty, to be polite let’s say, full-figured. But I just assumed it was because they were eating themselves silly on abundant fresh grass every day. It didn’t register to me that they were pregnant - because how could they get pregnant in spring, that is not even the breeding season!
The answer is, nobody told the dad - our Nigerian dwarf named Finnegan - that spring isn’t breeding season. When Finnegan wants to breed the girls, it’s breeding season. No need to wait for late summer/early fall!
Well alright then.
Introducing Elijah to Jambi, Clarice’s newborn buckling.
I gathered Clarice, her two new kids (a buckling and a doeling), and pre-labor Alabama and moved them into barn stalls where they could be safe and well looked after. We fully expected Alabama to give birth sometime overnight.
Alabama and her previous two kids, born January 4, 2023.
I checked in on Alabama during morning rounds and still no goat kids. A little before noon I checked again and still nothing. Perhaps time to start worrying…
I called Rachael at work at the clinic and she said to bring Alabama in for a checkup. Maybe she would need help giving birth. So I loaded ‘Bama into the back of my truck and headed down the mountain into town.
It turns out Alabama was in trouble - unable to give birth, she was wearing herself out stuck in labor for so many hours. Rachael decided to do a C-section to get the baby/babies out.
Have you ever seen a goat being born by C-section before? Yeah, me neither!
Alabama’s uterus had become twisted and infected, preventing her from giving birth naturally. As Rachael removed the (two) kids, Alabama began to hemorrhage. Rachael determined that the damage and sepsis were too great to save Alabama, even if she spayed her. So we decided to euthanize her. It was very sad - she was a great nanny goat.
One of the babies - a buckling - was stillborn and the girls at the clinic were not able to revive him. But the doeling - the first born and the one shown in the photo above - fought to breathe, and within a few minutes stood up and took her first steps.
What a lil’ trooper! We named her Dakota.
I brought Dakota home and over the next three or four weeks we tried grafting her onto Clarice. Since Clarice had babies and was producing plenty of milk, we figured to get Clarice to adopt Dakota as a third baby and nurse her along with her own kids.
Clarice was not really down with this plan.
Every three or four hours, all through the days and nights, Rachael or I would go down to the barn and put a judo-hold on Clarice in effort to give Dakota a minute or so to nurse. This worked - kind of, but not really. Clarice didn’t want to adopt Dakota.
So I became Dakota’s mom.
Bottle feeding Dakota, mid-October 2023.
Little orphan Dakota is all we have left of Alabama. (We gave her two kids born in January 2023 to our neighbor as a thank-you for helping us with the farm while Rachael was in recovery from giving birth to our lil’ buckling Elijah. They have a great home just down the road from us.)
We miss Alabama. She was a great goat. A good mom, and so full of personality! Here she is on the day we brought her home her back in May of 2020 (with a young Clarice in the background).
RIP Alabama, we love you! We are taking good care of Dakota for you…