Babies!

I've been staring at pregnant goats for months now. I've been fussing over them, making sure that their diet is perfect and that they have a nice little pregnancy ward that's warm and safe and fresh water and plenty of hay. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking - oh no, today might be the day - and then walk all the way back to the barn at the back corner of the property just to have them cry at me that I didn't bring them more grain. Spoiled rotten.

So it's the end of Feb and I can certainly say that I have got my exercise running buckets back and forth of water, which they invariably kick over and hay, which they just throw all around. And in my frenzy of pregnant goat caretaker, I just so happened to notice that one of my sheep didn't come out of her morning meal. So I went back, got a bucket kicked over by an ungrateful goat and then made my way to see what was going on with my Jacob/Icelandic cross named Petrone. Wandering out into the sheep pasture, I found her box and peered inside and found a pair of stunned little eyes staring back at me, all knock-kneed and freshly born. While I was standing there marveling at the ease in which Petrone took to her motherly tasks, she birthed a second knock-kneed, shivering ball of wool. She cleaned them up quickly, making very odd, maternal sounds.

They are a day old now and tromping around after their mother in the snow. They have little toupees of white hair in between their tiny lamps ears and I have yet to see them nurse, but their temps are right and their bellies feel full. Sometimes nature just does it, I guess.

I think it's funny how much time I have spent worrying about goats, I've just been throwing some hay to the sheep on the way to worry about the pregnant goats. I just never worried about the sheep. I wonder if they always lamb so easily. Maybe it's just that goats are such complainers that I dote on them more. The sheep just do their own thing.

So, I have heard that a watched pot never boils, but does a watched goat never kid?