The Good, The Bad, and The Update

It has been almost a week since my last post so I thought it was time for a new one. Lets start with the general update - we are holding at 11 kids including the little buck we picked up last week. He also has a name finally: Goat-San Babys Morning Arabica. So (in case you are keeping score) we have: Azalea (and brother), Arizona, Alaska, Artemis (and brothers Atlas and Apollo), Apple Fritter (and brother), Argentina, and Arabica. We have also transitioned Arabica to spending his days outside in the goat pasture where he plays with all the other kids and learns to be a goat. He is helping up with milking too - by eating it all. I always feel happy when I am not wasting milk. The days are sunny, the nights are mild, spring is in the air. Working our way backwards - the bad part is my does are all trying to die on me. Thistle is back to fighting ketosis. She won't eat grain because - well if I knew then I could fix the problem. We had given her dextrose thinking she would fight it and her ketone levels had come way down - and now they are back up which is simply frusterating because you know part of the problem is she is too stubborn to eat grain. Then Ysis - my less moody Saancha cross - comes down with what we think is listeria and 1/2 of her face is paralyzed. Poor thing has food/cud falling out of her mouth. Still just as cheerful as ever she keeps putting food in to keep up. She seems to be getting better but only time will tell if she heals completely Finally the good - first the doe kids are growing so well. Not one has hit the ground that I am sorry for that breeding. Are there ones who are better than others? Sure. But really, this years kids have not made me sad at all. Now we are working on leading on a chain so the beautiful kids can show themselves off and not fling themselves to the ground at the first show. Secondly we pulled kids off does for the day to watch udders fill up. While I would love to say they were all perfect and large, they weren't. Especially a certain ketotic doe, but I guess that is to be expected. Katie (arizona and alaska's mom) certainly bagged up tremedously though - almost scares me how much milk those two must be consuming. Overall though pretty well attached udders all around. We will certainly repeat this experiment to see how the does look after a few rounds of bagging up. Well that is all I can think of for now.