Nap Time at Beulah Land

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. John was on vacation (figuratively speaking) the week of Thanksgiving. By Monday he’d received over 15 phone calls from work so you can see why I’m skeptical of calling the week a vacation. We did go out to lunch twice and he turned his phone off while we were out eating. The end of the week was calmer than the beginning and almost all of us found a place and time to rest.

The babies all crowded in a small dog carrier to cuddle and keep warm.

The mommas napped in the sunshine while they could … producing milk takes a lot of energy so they have to conserve when they can!

The ‘house people’ were giving the goats a run for their money, starting with John! I tried to ignore the open computer and phone right beside him but I had a baseball bat at the ready in case either beeped!

I found Heide and Bud sleeping in this very unusual position. I’ve never seen them lay this close to each other in such a small area. Usually Bud likes to have a way of escape as Heide can tend to be a grouch at times. She has pms, too, you know!

We didn’t think the baby goats sleeping together would be a problem but it has become one. That and since each doe had triplets there are times when two babies are nursing when a cousin will slip in between them and take over the rightful baby’s teat.  A momma goat recognizes her babies by smelling their tail end, which should smell like her milk. The nursing thief’s tail end no longer smelled like their momma’s milk and their momma rejected them. AND the other momma also rejected them. We’ve had to go out and hold the correct mommas and force them to nurse their correct babies. We’ve also had to supplement the milk supply as the mommas don’t seem to be able to produce enough milk for triplets yet, which will add an additional milk smell confusion to the mix.

Good thing we got our naps in early - won’t be any more for awhile!

This entry was posted on December 2, 2009 at 08:50 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.