Tuesday, February 28th - will March come in like a lamb? I expect so...

What an absolutely crazy week. After SO much snow we spent the past few days with very spring like temperatures. Not so great for skiing or snowshoeing but not so bad if you're waiting for baby goats to be born. We'd much prefer it not be so cold for those wet little bodies.

Black Bart, minutes old - my first goat delivery!

On Friday, Lloyd took Ben and Bill to the University to have their horns debudded, before they start growing.  He was only gone about 20 minutes when Leah decided to give birth. I'm so glad I was home. She only had one kid but he (yes, another boy) was a big boy and she struggled a bit but between the two of us we made it through.  He's bigger than the other two little ones who are almost two weeks old now.  He's healthy and happy and has a great mom.

Billy getting a cuddle from friend Margie

 Unfortunately poor little Billy the kid  can't say the same thing. He was always a little smaller then his brother but it became obvious to me on the weekend that he was getting thinner and after some time observing I realized that she isn't letting him feed. The bigger one, Ben,  is doing just fine but poor little Billy is being pushed away every time he goes near his mom. She did feed him at first but I don't know if it's because he's smaller that she doesn't think he'll survive or what.




So I've taken over nanny duties and he's being fed every four hours and seems to be doing really well. I take the milk from his mom and put it in the fridge and warm it up and put it in a bottle. He struggled a little at first but now he's got the hang of it so I'm hoping he'll be okay.  Poor Amelia, is a first time mom and maybe it's just too overwhelming for her. Time will tell.

Our strange weather has made for some beautiful skies

 Lloyd is still working on tiling the kitchen in the garage and the end is in sight. He expected to have it finished this past weekend but we came out to the barn on Sunday morning to be greeted by a good 4 to 5 inches of water on the floor. Most of the day was spent trying to pump that all out. The snow melting so quickly combined with the ground still being frozen combined with the fact we never finished banking the ground around the sides of the barn made for a perfect storm - no pun intended.  The job was made much easier by the fact the weather was so nice - sunny and mild enough to not need a coat as we worked with a couple of sump pumps to clear out the melted snow.  Fortunately the animals pens were actually pretty dry so it was not so bad. As our friend says, "That's farming". It's so true, every day brings a new challenge but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

We have one more little girl to give birth and we hope if she has twins that at least one of them is a girl. If not, we will still only have the three girls for breeding next year. But it will make for a goodly amount of milk this year. Lots of cheese in our future!

We have a busy week coming up. We're both attending a seminar on starting a new business on Thursday and then on Friday we're attending Winterlude, at Island Hill Farm. We've been to a couple of these in the past and this time I'm helping out in the kitchen. Looking forward to that.