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Location: Washington, United States

Trying to live the Zen of aging.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Grandmother to a Goat

My kid's (pun intended) farm has grown by many little animals this cold spring. This baby however drew a clinker in mother lottery. She left him still in his birth sac, lying in the field. He was noticed in the morning with his mother, nothing unusual but several hours later he was still there and mom and the herd had moved on. Amazingly he was still alive. He was cleaned up and brought to the Dalan farm. They have a herd of milk goats and a freezer with frozen colostrum when served warm is the perfect thing for a baby goat who life is in the balance. I got to take care of him along with two of my granddaughters on the days their Mom worked. He is two days old in this picture, skinny, sleeping, eating, and pooing. Mostly sleeping.
Here he's being fed momma goat's milk with a pop bottle and special goat-like nipple designed to fit on said pop bottle. As you can see he can stand up though he's wobbly. He sounds like a human baby when he's hungry and cries. I, a not-farm kid, was instructed that they have to eat standing up or there's a risk of the baby aspirating the milk and dying.
I call him BG, Baby Goat, the girls were calling him Oliver. I suggested they call him Whiteout. He's a Boer goat but with none of the brown face markings they usually have. He has blue eyes too. At two days he thought legs-in-jeans was his mother. Now he thinks my daughter-in-law Heather is his mom. He's fat and mostly happy. Except he thinks he belongs in the house. He sleeps at night with the other goat babies but will follow Heather all around the house and kitchen any time he can. Not sure his mind can be changed. He is too cute to turn away.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Wendy said...

Aww, he is cute! Welcome back - haven't seen your posts for some time.
Emphysema sucks!

June 3, 2010 at 6:05 PM  

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