It’s Deja Vu all over again….
Two weeks to the day after Magic kidded, I reached over the fence to check her daughter, Sugar‘s ligaments. It was day 145 in her pregnancy, and she was right on time. We also had a snow squall moving in, so the barometric pressure was helping her out a bit. I noticed her belly had dropped and her udder was bigger. She was acting normally, so I let her be and decided to knock out the grocery shopping. By the time I got back from the store, we had an inch of snow on the ground and Sugar and her two pregnant buddies were cozied up in their poly dome. The dropping temperature made me nervous so even though Sugar wasn’t having any discharge, I set her up in the indoor kidding stall and turned on the camera. It was about 11:30. Knowing that I was likely to be busy in a few hours, I put up the groceries, got dinner in the slow-cooker and made some lunch. I also canceled an afternoon appointment, and notified my vet and goat buddies. Sugar quickly kicked in to active labor. I watched her paw the ground, “talk” to her right side, and frequently get up and down. By about 1:45 she was starting to strain with contractions. It’s interesting to note that even at this point, she didn’t have any discharge. This is the same pattern that her dam showed in labor two weeks ago. By 2:30, she was really pushing hard, but her amniotic sac was still intact. I did an internal check and decided to break her bag of water to make sure the kid was positioned correctly. It was lined up right, just big. I grasped his front feet and pulled gently with Sugar’s contractions and by 2:35, she had a big buckling (7lbs, 8oz). Sugar never seemed very big with her pregnancy, so I assumed this was her only kid. I was a little disappointed that we only got a single buckling because Sugar’s previous owner really wanted one of her daughters. However, within minutes, Sugar started pushing again and had a girl (6lbs, 2 oz)! The girl is light brown with lighter moonspots, and the boy is light red with dark brown moonspots. Both kids have looong ears and will have roman noses. Great job, Sugar! To read more about these kids, click here
