Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Twins!!!!

Muffet presented us with two beautiful doelings about 6:30 this morning.  I heard her on the baby monitor and ran out to check.  I discovered she was indeed in labor and ran back to the house for my birthing kit and to wake Rhiannon and Brad.

She gave birth to a cream colored kid first (we wouldn't know until a bit later whether "it" was a buckling or doeling) and immediately started cleaning it.


About 10 minutes later and just after she had gotten the first one cleaned up, she had another one, this time all black.


The birth was text book perfect.  Muffet seemed glad I was there with her, letting me help her clean the babies, pick them up and dip their navels.  She even tried to help Brad when I asked him to put up a couple more boards between her stall and her neighbor's stall.



Rhiannon helped by fetching things and dipping the navels while I held the kids.  She was also the official photographer for the birth.

Both doelings have nursed twice and Muffet has passed the afterbirth.  I was able to milk a little over a pint from Muffet.  She wanted no part of the milking stand, we'll work on that later.  But she stood very nicely in her stall eating her grain while I milked her, no kicking or laying down.  I brought the colostrum back to the house to warm it up a bit and tried to bottle feed the doelings. It didn't seem like they nursed much and I wanted to be sure they had gotten enough colostrum, but they wanted no part of the bottle.  They did both nurse on Muffet again though.



The doelings were under their heat lamp and Muffet was laying right next to them when I left the barn around 10:00am.




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