Our kidding season started 38 days ago, with our first healthy baby born to Phoebe on January 17. Rachel the Goat followed two weeks later, on February 3, with two healthy babies. I always have to travel in mid-February for work, and luckily, based on dwarf Nigerian gestation and when Bangs paid special attention to each of the girls, Grits and Gravy were set to kid after I got back from my work trip. Even though I didn’t expect them to kid while I was gone, leaving my goats is always stressful, and especially when they could have kids at any moment. At least 75-80% of the time, they’re fine, but the other 15% of the cases can cause so much stress.
Luckily, I left for work on February 8 and returned on the 15th, to no major goat issues; both Phoebe and Rachel were doing great with their kids, and Grits and Gravy looked fine, but still very, very pregnant. Gravy notoriously chooses to have her kids when I’m in town for something, and so she basically waited until I was back from my trip, but out running errands, to have four perfect babies within an hour’s time frame (on February 16). Within that short time I was gone, she had those kids cleaned up, fed, and they were already bouncing around just like the little baby goats you see all over the internet.
Grits, on the other hand… There’s something about the last one, but it never seems to go well.
Year 1 (2022), Rachel was last: 4 stillborns.
Year 2 (2023), Rachel was last: 2 of 4 didn’t make it.
Year 3 (2024), Gritsy was last (February 22): 2 successful live births, 1 stillborn, and 1 we had to pull.
There’s also a strong correlation with the number 4, here, and we can’t negate that fact. These mama goats are small, and having four babies is hugely taxing on their bodies. With that many kids, it’s just likely there will be a problem. Unfortunately, there’s no way to control how many they’ll have. Good diet and nutrition will favor more babies, but how many she will have is also entirely up to genetics, time frame of breeding, other things going on in her life, etc. In other words, I would always opt for three kids if I could (it’s a good balance between having enough to sell and make feed money, but not too many that it challenges the mother’s health or ability to care for them), but I can’t control that.
Grits is a special girl, and based on dwarf nigerian goat gestation (145 days) and when Bangs was especially interested in her, I had her kidding date noted as February 21. As she was the last and based on how large she was, I was very anxious about her birth. When I went out to let the animals out on the morning of February 22, I found two new little babies screaming, along with one stillborn baby. Based on how loud those babies were, and the fact that they were dry, I assumed they were already a few hours old. But they clearly hadn’t nursed yet, and Gritsy was still retaining her afterbirth. I didn’t immediately decide something was wrong, but it was clear things weren’t necessarily right. I left her and the babies to be for some time (I also had to come inside and do some things for my actual paying job), and after several checks throughout the morning, it was pretty evident that she still had another kid that had yet to be birthed. At this point, it had been at least 6 hours that she had been holding that kid, and likely longer based on how dry her living kids were when I first saw them. If she was retaining a kid, it was very unlikely the kid was alive (the common “wives tale” is that all kids need to come out within half an hour of each other to live, although I’m not a veterinary doctor, so please don’t trust me on that).
Grits is one part of a set of triplets. Her sister Toast died unexpectedly last summer, and I still carry a level of guilt and sadness over it (even the vet didn’t exactly know what happened, so it was very challenging as there was nothing we could learn from to prevent it from happening again). So the thought of losing Gritsy too immediately made me panic. If we didn’t pull the kid, we were chancing an infection, so we had to get the kid out. I’ve lived with livestock for most of my life, but I’ve always been relieved of the traumatic experiences, like intervening in births, by my mother, who is extremely talented at checking her emotions and doing what needs to get done when it comes to saving an animal’s life (my mom pulled Rachel’s four kids two years ago). I, however, am very emotional when it comes to my animals, and generally very high-strung; some of the more challenging aspects of livestock management, like assisting in a birth, can definitely cause me a lot of anxiety.
In this case, I had never pulled a kid before and the only person here to help was Willis, and his help can be a mixed blessing sometimes, especially when it can potentially cause harm to an animal (our first experience disbudding kids together did not go well… Needless to say, that kid still has horns). I was able to get the vet on the phone pretty quickly for a rough overview of what needed to happen and some moral support, and after at least an hour of hard, hard work, we were able to get the kid out. But it wasn’t without an immense amount of stress, frustration, physical and mental strength, tears, and help from our amazing vet. If we weren’t able to pull the kid, the vet could have done it, but it would have been much later in the day and with a lot more anxiety in the interim. Gritsy was not exactly in immediate danger of passing away in those moments, but my understanding is that the longer she held that kid, the greater the chance for problems. A few hours after we were able to remove the kid, we were able to get her to our vet to make sure she’d be fine, and luckily she will be with some antibiotics, pain meds, and lots of preparation H.
Gritsy made it, and she has two babies that are alive. However, I don’t want to neglect the fact that two goats died in the process, the two babies that were yet to have been born/were birthed unliving. We have chosen to live our life with a high number of animals, and we expect there to be losses. Some loss is chosen–we take their lives for other purposes, like the chickens I opted to harvest this week–and some loss comes with a depth of a sadness that you almost can’t recover from (Taco and Toast). Regardless of how it happens, these deaths still take a huge emotional toll on all of us.
It’s also very likely Grits won’t have kids again. This is another type of loss that is challenging to think about. She’s a great milker, so now I will be stressed about extending her milking time frame as long as possible since I will only have Phoebe and Rachel to milk in the future. If you remember from a previous post, it’s very challenging to take a break from milking a mom and come back to it successfully, so I will now have to juggle having someone come do it for me if I have to travel. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but one more “thing” to manage.
I had many “why do I do this to myself?!?” moments on Thursday, and definitely thought about never breeding my girls again. But when you see them survive and overcome their own challenges, it reminds you that animals are amazing, and you can learn so much with them, about nature and our role as humans in our ecosystems, and you forget about all the bad that can come with your responsibility to them. In spite of all the stress and second guessing of my life choices this week, there’s still so much to celebrate. Two kids made it; they’re not quite thriving yet, but they’ll get there. Grits lived. Willis and I can be hyperbolic about the fact that we saved a life. I can finally say I pulled a goat instead of having to call my mom to do it. Our vet gave me more confidence and helped me understand that a lot of what I’m stressing about is not as worrisome as it seems, and the breed of goats I chose to cohabitate with is notoriously resilient.
Some of the wins with livestock are short-lived… With this many animals it likely won’t be long before something else happens to cause us sadness, but for now, we can enjoy the good of this week, and be happy we have completed our kidding season with nine living, beautiful babies.
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