They have finally arrived! Penelope went into labor Tuesday morning, and delivered two healthy male kids.
Her teats filled up with milk early Tuesday morning, so I knew it was the day. She started labor contractions around 8am, and had finished delivering both of them by 10:30. And she passed the placenta around 2pm. She is doing very well, and produces about 2.5 Quarts of milk a day so far. This is the first actual birth I have witnessed. I always missed my cow's birth by about 15 minutes. It happens quicker than I think it will. So here's a few pics of the first one coming out, he was bigger. I was busy drying off the first one when she delivered the second kid. The second one was smaller and just spilled out.
The kids are healthy and strong. This is Ficus, the firstborn, just hours old.
And Ferrum, smaller, but louder!
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11 comments:
YAY!! I'm so happy it all went well!! We have been waiting for these boys forever it seems. Congrats friend! :)
TOTALLY COOL!!!
AWWWWW, Such cuties!
congrats on those handsome little guys!
Oh they are so cute! What are you going to do with them? Are they keepers?
Congratulations, they are really cute!
They are beautiful! I would love to hear what you are doing with the milk (besides drinking it!)-I am picturing yogurt and homemade cottage cheese-but not butter, right? How much do the kids require? Kris
OMG,they are sweet!
They are so cute. Congratulations on the safe arrival.
Universal response, they are absolutely cute, they look like a cross between a rabbit with those floppy ears and a camel with those long knobby legs. They are getting along very well, healthy and strong, and learning to buck and jump and nibble at hay. And Penelope is recovering well, although in the future I would kid later so that the mamas can recover better on spring grass.
farmmom, they have been the long awaited arrival, I sounded the alarm a month early because they were supposedly due in mid-January, but we have a nice little warm spell this week, perfect for mama and kids.
ChristyABC, these guys are being raised for meat. I get attatched to them now when they are young and bottle-feeding, but my attatchement to them changes as they mature, and by Fall I will be sizing them up for the butchering date.
hickchick, right now we are drinking glorious milk in everything! We are basically the third kid, Penelope is giving about 80 oz a day (or 5 lbs, or 2.5 Q), each kid is getting 26-30oz a day, leaving us about the same. I will be making yogurt, and drained yogurt as a cream cheese kind of spread. I would like to try some cheeses, but not until after the kids are weaned. And I will be making butter, but again maybe not until after the kids are weaned. I will post more about our dairy products in the next few weeks and months.
Thanks all for you well-wishing and congratulating. I'll post up more pics as they grow.
What lovely little kids,
they're gorgeous at this age, aren't they? I've currently got 30 giving me the run-around in the barn; & expecting another 20-or-so more in the next few weeks....no wonder I've got bags under my eyes!
I've found that if our ladies give birth to twins the first out is invariably the biggest; the Mum seldom hardly notices the birth of the second kid. Being British Toggenburgs they can take ages to 'bag up' - one of mine started a full six weeks before kidding, which was immensely frustrating as you can imagine!
A useful book with a wide range of ideas for uses of the milk (some quite unusual) is Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats. I dip into it regularly, for inspiration - although the majority of our milk goes into crafting artisan gelato (luxury, traditional Italian ice cream) for our local market here in West Wales, UK.
Congratulations on the babies - & thank goodness you're practical & not concerned about raising boys for meat. Sadly, all-too-often these days, it seems that people have no real idea where their food comes from; preferring to 'bury their heads in the sand' & buy shrink-wrapped from the supermarket than eat meat from an animal which has been happily & healthily raised. And then they have the cheek to call ethically & environmentally-responsible homesteaders/smallholders/crofters, cruel....! It's a funny (often sad) old world.
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