We’ve been keeping a very close eye on Abbey since she arrived with an unknown due date. When we picked the new girls up in late October I guessed that she had 4 at the earliest, 8 at the latest weeks to go based purely on my experience with cows and sheep.
Goats follow pretty much all the same signs and symptoms as other livestock that may show labour is getting closer, but they might also show no signs at all. Abbey was much closer to the latter category with her physical signs. She had certainly started to develop an udder in October (versus no udder when I saw her in June), and definitely looked wide enough with a bigger belly on the right (there’s a saying in ruminants – ‘lunch on the left and runts on the right’), she was bossy with the other girls (common with the herd queen), she dug to China every day trying to get comfortable with her big lumbering belly and she was restless 24/7, up and down, unable to get comfortable. For two whole months.
But no mucous goop, no swollen pooch, no shiny hard udder or strutted teats. There were certainly a few times I wondered if she was actually pregnant or just a cranky doe. Finally in December, her ligaments started to soften. They popped up and down a bit, but remained soft until on the 13th December they disappeared and by early morning yesterday, Abbey was in labour.
Everything progressed as it should until it came time to push, then progress slowed right down until I could finally see the kid coming nose first. Abbey was getting tired so I gloved up to assist and with a little bit of help our first Pygmy Goat kid slid out into the world, a gorgeous 71.8% black agouti doeling. Very thankful for the experience I have had over the years assisting the delivering of stuck puppies, lambs and cows as it made the whole first experience with our Pygmy Goats so much less stressful than it would have been otherwise.
After a big drink of molasses and a quick sleep, Abbey is proving to be a wonderful mother. Eagleburra Amira is a very strong, very independent little miss, up on her feet looking for a feed within minutes and is already stressing poor Abbey with her adventurous spirit.
Needless to say we are very excited to welcome her to Eagleburra and are probably not going to get any work done for the next few months 🙂
