Around here when the weather chills and turns to fall, three things happen. The leaves change, the chickens lose their feathers and the female goats go into heat. It’s quite obvious when they do – their tails wag, they are incredibly vocal and oh yeah – the bucks are quite busy doing what they do.
After that it is a matter of time until the doe has her kid(s). Goats’ gestation is 5 months and 5 days or so, or 150 days. I record the date that I last notice a goat go into heat, and do the math from there. It has not been my experience for a female goat to come into heat after she has been bred.
Until today. I was pretty sure Apple would kid around February 7-10 or so. Clearly my math was wrong.
When I looked at her this morning, I was sure Apple would kid before the first week of February, but not today. As soon as I got out of the truck, I could hear the babies. And the temperature was about 10. I scrambled.
This buck kid was ok – he was up and nursing. But the white doe kid was cold and I was pretty sure she hadn’t eaten yet. The doe was quickly moved to the basement by the fire, and was soon followed by her mama and her brother.
They stayed in the basement until we knew they had full bellies and were warm all the way through. They they were moved to the barn with heat lamps and Murphy to watch over them.
That’s it for kids this year! No one else was bred so we wait until the weather changes to fall once again. And do better math 
2 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Your Murphy references crack me up! It’s easy to see why he makes it past Thanksgiving.
Continuing the Discussion