A Ruskus in the Barn

After a DAY for both of us - I had Kindergarten class and John had fit a friend’s funeral in around his normal work day.  Should have known we weren’t going to make it to bed early or even on time last night. And it had been a late night the night before. John had been fighting with our master bath plumbing, trying to unclog the pipes, working late with no success. Last night he brought home a borrowed electric arguer, which WORKED! Yeah. No more midnight treks down the hall way to the guest bath, walking into the closed hall door in the dark.

After cleaning up the arguer mess and extra tools and cleaningourselves up, we had just laid down in bed when I turned on the baby monitor. What a wonderous sound came through - a tiny little baby goat meowing for it’s momma and the momma (Betsy) doing her baby talk back. Adrenaline kicked us out of bed and running to the barn we found a baby doeling crying in the feed alley, separated from her momma by the stall fence. She was so tiny she fit through the 4 inch squares in the wire fence. Betsy must have laid up against the fence and birthed her right out into the feed alleyway and she lay in the puddle of birthwater, shivering wet with cold and wanting her momma NOW! Momma Betsy was busy cleaning up a much bigger buckling but she kept looking back across the fence to ‘maaa’ gently at her lost baby.

In the stall, the other two pregnant does were watching in wide eyed wonder. All of these were first fresheners so this is all new and exciting and scarey for them. Especially scarey was the way Betsy, their life long friend and cousin, all of a sudden turned into an overly protective momma and about butted them to kingdom come when they came near enough to see and smell those nosiy little babies.  Needing to separate the small herd, we put the two preggos into the feed alleyway while we tried to get the wet doeling to nurse. She was weak from being separated immediately at birth and not having nature’s cleaning from her momma that stimulates the sucking reflect.

The birthing hormones were running high in the barn and caused Sunshine (in the other stall) to start butting heads through the fence with the two preggos. She butted at them so hard she knocked the welding off the bottom of the gate.  All of the noise and confusion brought the chickens in the coop made from the middle stall of the barn to wild life. Rudy-Tudy-Two thought someone was attaching his hens so he went balistic - he’s a very possessive, protective rooster. Add to the ruckus Betsy trying to butt away the two cats who came in to see who was meowing, hunting some baby kittens.

Fifteen ‘fires’ to put out at the same time! John took care of Sunshine, putting her out in another safe area where she couldn’t even see the two preggo does. Those does took over her stall and out of the feed alleyway. Turning out most of the lights helped calm the chickens down and finally the cats got bored with all the fruitless (to them) activity. Afterall, to a cat, it’s all about them or it’s nothing.

The baby buckling was up and nursing just fine but still the baby doeling couldn’t seem to get the hang of it so I held the buckling while John encouraged Betsy to bond with the doeling, licking it into life. Bonding was achieved but still no sucking.  I milked a little colostrum in a syringe and then dribbled it into the doeling’s mouth - yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! finally success.

We were then able to put the baby down and she turned to her momma and nursed on her own. All the nursing finished up the birthing process, stimulating contractions that expelled the afterbirth.  I had checked Betsy at 7:00 and thought she might go the next day but she produced two sweet little babies all on her own in less than 3 hours. This is how kidding should be - no human interference needed. The only help Betsy needed was due to a fence humans had put in. This whole night would preach very well.

Oh, the blessed relief of crawling into our own bed after a successful night!

This entry was posted on April 9, 2009 at 01:06 pm and is filed under Homestead living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.