Above all, try something. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Dairy Trims and Waiting on Runty

 Since Tuesday, we haven't had any more goat kids born. I have been paying close attention to Runty, as I noticed her udder developing in the past week, which usually means kidding is imminent. On Friday Ed helped me to give both Mama Janet and Mama-to-be Runty dairy trims.
A dairy trim serves two purposes.
First of all, it allows the milking doe to more easily be milked by her goat keeper, by keeping the area above the milk pail free of hair, and debris that can spoil the milk if it falls in.
Secondly, during the birthing process and for a few weeks afterwards the doe will be much easier to clean up as her body naturally purges itself of unnecessary birthing tissues.
The area of the goat that are trimmed using a standard electric trimmer are udder, tail, and stomach.
Above you can see Janet lined up next to Wild Child to see how nicely her trim ended up.
Wild Child did not take from our fall breeding with the buck and we hope to breed her in the next two weeks as she goes into her spring heat.
 Another shot of Janet and her newly useful udder! She looks great and producing a fantastic amount of milk already for a first time freshener. To freshen means to breed a doe, there fore refreshing her milk production.
 Excellent balance on her udder. My good looking girl!
 Poor Runty. Definitely pregnant, and now uncomfortable. She can be found lounging around the goat pen, usually grumpy looking.
 Grumpy smurf. I hope she kids soon!
 Did I mention we got 8 inches of snow on Wednesday? Yup. We did.
A final parting shot of the pregnant Runty. Hopefully next time I blog she will be a happy mama.
The two 5-day-old doelings are doing really great, by the way, happily pouncing, running, and bleating their way through the day. Completely indifferent to the snow we recently experienced, I finally decided to take their fancy sweaters off today. I decided to name them Flo and Pinkie, and will post recent Flo and Pinkie photos soon!
That's all for today.
Hugs and Hay in your gloves~ The Jack Creek Coyles

1 comment:

  1. Congrats again on the doelings. How exciting to have two girls! Are you keeping both? I hope Runty pops soon. She looks so uncomfortable.

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