Bippity Boppity Boo

I am a little behind but mostly I think that is simply from too many things to do and not enough hours to do it. However I briefly had to post about Annie’s little twins.

Annie was our last kid born last year, at the beginning of May and as a result she was handled less than our older girls. She was a bit wild and a bit skittish. If you caught her she calmed down and behaved fine, but first you had to catch her. This is the down side to having a herd that is over a certain number. The animals who are friendly get more attention and as long as the less friendly ones are eating and seem content you don’t chase them down and handle them. Annie fell to the second set. We would see her eating with her mother, we would see her happily lying in the sunshine, and we would catch her to trim hooves and make sure she was alright but we didn’t handle her daily. As a result we missed the fact that she was definitely pregnant.

Sure we noticed she was round, but she was also VERY furry. I mean, for goodness sakes, she is a Togg. Then we noticed she was growing a small udder, but it was pretty covered with fur and she comes from strong milking lines so there was always a possibility that it was just a precocious udder. We went round and round in our own minds. She was so small… when could she have gotten bred? Wouldn’t we have noticed?

Finally over our “kidding weekend” one of our friends asked when Annie was due. Sigh, I guess it was time to face reality. So finally after Azalea kidded we tried chasing her down. It took quite some effort but we finally caught her. Sure enough – there was definitely a baby we could feel. Since we didn’t want to run around the pasture every time we wanted to catch her – we put her in with Arabica (well! She was already pregnant at this point!)

A week and a half later Annie delivered a beautiful set of buck/doe twins. They are the most adorable things ever. Perfect Toggenburg markings with little Lamancha ears, truly precious. Annie was such a good mother and a good milker. Shortly after she went to live at her new home where her milk is helping to raise calves, but the two kids stayed with us. I’m sure there will be many pictures of the two of them, but for now here is one shot of them and yes, we are calling the doe Bippity Boppity Boo.

Surprise, Surprise!

We only had 1 doe due to kid last weekend. Azalea is a Saanen yearling milker who was born last January and we decided to freshen in February so we would have some Saanen senior kids. You can recall our breeding/hiking adventure with Azalea back in September. Remember how she angry she was about getting taken all over the mountain? Remember how she did not enjoy the hiking at all? Well I’m afraid she got the last laugh.

Her daughter was born late Monday evening and while Azalea will tell you it was a horrible process it was not extremely eventful – until we saw the kid. Little Bamboo has tiny little elf ears! And instead of being solid white like Azalea and any good Saanen should be she has the palest brown patterning! In fact her brown pattern looks remarkably similar to her ½ brothers – Arizona’s boys. So instead of a senior Saanen kid Azalea gave us our senior Arabica kid we had been hoping for in the early does. Although I would have loved a Saanen doe, I’m grateful for another doe kid and if you’re going to have and experimental, a beautiful doe is the best way to have them.