Babies are here!!! Cornerstone Farm STS Ammi and Firestone Creek HWD Katmandu have 2 bucklings and 1 doeling! I did this breeding last year and we all kicked ourselves for wethering the buck (2 does and 1 buck last year) and I retained a doeling. Everyone loves the kids from last time, they grow long and dairy. I am so excited! Here is a link, I put the pictures on my facebook farm page. I will try and upload to here later :o)
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Wow, that sounds kind of like the lady that did the session at ADGA. She said she'd been doing it for 30 years also and said that she'd never recommend anyone buy a kid that was dam raised. Luckily three of us did catch one of the newbies later and tell her not to worry about her forthcoming kids. Like Jordana said, the main thing you have to do is dry off the babies because the mamas tend to pop them out so fast, they don't have time to do it themselves. Poor girls just can't lick that fast! When I was getting started, I don't think I read a single book that talked about the importance of getting kids dry, but they sure scared you with all their drawings of how the kids are supposed to be lined up when they're born. But we've lost far more babies to hypothermia than anything else. It's so simple, even a child can dry off a kid, but most books and a lot of experienced people make it sound far more complicated and scary.
Thanks for posting the video! I know it's a lot of work to make one. We've videotaped a couple of births but only got one edited, and without editing, they're agonizingly long!
One less thing to worry about -- it really doesn't matter whether you've got one or two legs presenting (or even none) as long as you have the nose. I know all the books have the perfect presentation pictures and a lot of people talk about kids "not fitting," but somehow they think that their hand will fit in there to grab the other leg and pull it forward. A doe actually needs more space in her pelvis for that maneuver. I just had a yearling give birth to a nose only presentation a couple weeks ago.
Janel, I hope your class wasn't as scary as the ADGA session I attended. There were a couple of people in there who had never attended a goat birth yet, and I think they were pretty nervous by the end. The woman doing it made it sound like you needed to intervene a lot and even said that a kid can't be born tail first. I guess my does don't read the same books she does because they've done that more than a few times. Another ND breeder and I were talking afterwards, and she said that the very first kid ever born on her farm was tail first. I really wonder if Nigerians give birth easier than standard goats or if standard goat breeders just tend to intervene more because they're often taking kids to bottlefeed anyway.
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