BABIES!!!!

Everyone has been after me to keep up with my farm blog, but writing for a living....well, you know it's like a plumber with leaky pipes and a mechanic whose car always needs fixing. But the babies are coming daily so I thought I'd post a little something every day during kidding season.

Kidding season officially started last Friday with a set of twins born to a purebred Boer doe--Clara. She's a lousy mother...never even looked back at her kids. Left them there on their own. I had to halter her to nurse.

Two days later, we had another terrible mother--Ashley--with twin bucks. Jessica joked that we should name one of them "Karen" (after her biological mother), but then changed her mind deciding to save that name for a future market hog.

Nestle also kidded that evening, however, she was a wonderful mother to her single doe.

The next day held our first casualty. Pumpkin Pie had trouble kidding and drug her partially born baby around essentially killing it before it was born. In an attempt to salvage her colostrum (first milk, for you non-farming folk), I haltered her and worked at grafting one of Ashley's kids on to her.

Teacup, also a maiden doe, popped on the 13th with a big buck.

February 14th brought us two maiden does each kidding large singles. Appropriately, the girl was named Valentine and the boy is Cupid. Cupid is a toad and will most likely be one of Jessica's 4-H projects (that's Cupid and his mother, Oreo).

So far, all of the kids have been white with brown heads....traditional Boer, regardless of their percentages. But this afternoon Anabelle graced us with our first two paint kids. The doe has a dark brown body with two white legs on the left side. Maybe I'll name her Lefty. The second kid born was a traditional colored buck and a few minutes ago she surprised us with a triplet buck all dark brow with a lightening bolt down his ribs on either side...flashy little devil!