It's full-on baby season. A few of the goats had babies in mid-March, then the sheep started lambing. The cows went early when they started calving in the first week of March.
Today 3 goats had babies and a couple of ewes had lambs.
I've learned to recognize the signs of labor in sheep and goats. I've helped deliver a few babies who have been bound up in the canal. Usually, the mom takes care of everything and pops out her one, two or three babies. They immediately start licking them off, and a slimy newborn will turn into a fluffy bouncing kid in 20 minutes. They start to get up from the moment the amniotic sack breaks and they feel air on their face. Sometimes that's when they're still in the canal, sometimes it's as they hit the ground as their mom delivers them standing up, sometimes we have to break the sack after they're on the ground. Then they struggle for around 10 minutes, getting more accustomed to their limbs. Then they're up and walking, and trying to nurse. Precocious young.
We're bottlefeeding the dairy goat kids, since we took the kids off the moms to allow us to use the moms for demonstrations and education. They get fed 2-3 times per day for 12 weeks until they're finally weaned. When we introduce them to the bottle, they're a little slow to get the hang of it. A few of them have been bottlefed for a couple weeks now, and they clamor for the bottles, climbing over each other to try to get at the milk. It makes you feel popular.
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