Lil Devil's Geocaching Pages

I haven't written a blog entry in over 4 years, as life has been really busy, and quite frankly, I lost interest. We bought a house with 5 acres, did some redecorating, got some animals, built a barn, and continue to travel a lot. But this story is about our animals. We currently have 14 pygmy goats, 3 horses, 2 chickens, 2 dogs, a cat, and a partridge in a pear tree. Well, maybe not a partridge. But we do have apple trees.

I must say it's been therapeutic writing this story, and I'm going to try to write more often. No promises.

So this story starts early last week when a couple of our goats were slightly injured while being chased by our dogs. The dogs are part border collie, and herding goats is their job, but the dogs are also part rottweiler and they sometimes get more aggressive than need be. The goats were either nipped at on the hindquarters or got scratched by something they might have been jumping over while escaping the dogs.

The injured goats were Nibblet, who was pregnant, and Mama, who despite the name is not pregnant but is much older than all our other goats. Since they were obviously limping, we decided to keep the two injured goats in the courtyard by the house so they wouldn't be further injured by the other goats, who are always head-butting each other. Plus it's easier to keep an eye on them when they're close. It turned out to be a good thing that we kept them close, because Thursday morning we were awakened to a whole lot of bleating going on. When we looked outside we saw Nibblet laying with her two new babies, who we named Ebony and Ivory due to their all-black and all-white colors.

Right from the start it was obvious that something wasn't right with Ebony. While Ivory was learning to stand within an hour, and walking in 3-4 hours, Ebony was still struggling to do either in the afternoon. At first we figured maybe Ivory was born first by a couple of hours, so Ebony was a little behind, later we weren't so sure. Ebony should have caught up. By the afternoon, Ivory was standing and nursing under her mom, but Ebony struggled to do so. We weighed them and Ebony was actually a few ounces heavier, at about 2 lbs, 14 ounces.

During the day, our friends Kris and Kim, who have several goats of their own, came over to see the babies. Kris took a bunch of pictures with his fancy camera. I will add some of those pictures to this page as soon as I can.

That evening we were happy to see Ebony up and walking, with mom right behind her licking and bumping her along. They got to the far side of the courtyard, and Ebony fell into a gap at the bottom of the fence. Mom tried briefly to help, but then went back to her pen to care for Ivory. After a few minutes Beth went outside and rescued Ebony, and I got some 2-by-4's to lay along the bottom of the fence so neither baby could get stuck again.

The next morning when we got up, Nibblet was hungry as usual, so Beth went out to give her some alfalfa. Ivory staggered around, following mom and getting a sip from moms moving udder whenever she could. It should be noted that mother goats don't lay down to nurse like dogs do; rather they stand up and the baby stands under her and tilts her head up to the nipple. The only problem with this is that mom doesn't stand still long enough for baby to get a decent meal.

Meanwhile Ebony was still laying in her bed. Not asleep, but not really fully awake and aware either. We picked her up and it was obvious she wasn't doing well. She was very weak. We figured she didn't learn to nurse quick enough and now was malnourished and/or dehydrated and too weak to nurse on her own. Beth drove down to the farm supply and got a package of goat formula and a nipple bottle to feed with.

We brought Ebony inside and wrapped her in a blanket and put her in a basket with a heating pad. We tried to feed her with the bottle, but the nipple thing didn't fit the bottle well and just made a mess. Then Beth found an eye-dropper thing in the drawer, sterilized it, and we used that. It worked well, and we were able to get a few drops of formula in Ebony's mouth. At first she seemed too weak to swallow, so we held her head up and massaged her neck to help the formula go down. We then let her rest. Every 20 minutes or so we'd wake her up again and make her swallow another eye-dropper or two full of formula. After an hour she seemed to be regaining strength as she cried a little. Another half hour and she held her head up on her own. A half hour later she even tried to stand up. We cheered her on as she continued to improve.

Around noon Beth had to leave for a while due to a prior commitment. I brought Ebony and her basket into my office so I could get some work done in between feedings, and I could keep an eye on her while she slept. After a while she started to relapse and it got harder and harder to get her to eat anymore. At one point I looked in the basket to see how she was sleeping, and my heart sank as I realized she wasn't breathing. I watched and listened carefully, hoping to see life, but she was gone. She had struggled for 32 hours and finally gave in to whatever ailed her.

Beth arrived back home just a few minutes later, and we cried together while cradling Ebony. After a while we got ourselves together and we went outside. We found a box and put Ebony in it. Then we dug a grave near the apple trees and lay the box in the ground. We covered her with dirt and several large rocks and bricks. I set one of the bricks vertically as a sort of marker.

Ivory, on the other hand, is doing well. She's nursing a lot, and almost walking well enough to keep nursing even as mom walks around. Although I must say mom is also learning to hold still a while and let the baby nurse.

And during all of this, we noticed that the udder under one of our other goats, Bella, is now hanging prominently. We may have another pair of baby goats show up any time now.