Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Sigh.

Apparently our girl was experiencing false labor for the past approximately 36 hours. She was still having mild contractions when we checked on her during the night, but by this morning they were no more.

And even more surprising – her ligaments are back. Those ligaments near her tail end are the biggest predictors of impending kidding – they go soft to let her bones separate enough for birth. Yesterday we couldn’t feel them – except for a couple of times when I almost thought I could, but then they would disappear again – today they are soft, but they are clearly there.

She is up and alert and enjoying the mid-70s and sunshine on pasture with the other goats. Her actual “due date” is this Friday, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on her over the next few days, waiting for the real thing.

Almost 24 hours since her ligaments went soft, and Aberdeen is still in the first stage of labor – she’s having what appear to be mostly mild contractions, but has not yet started pushing.

We’re off to try to grab a little shut-eye, once again with the baby monitor (and Koko’s remarkably rhythmic cud chewing) in our ears. I suspect we won’t get much sleep again tonight, as even in our sleep we’ll be listening for any changes, and setting the alarm for every couple of hours just to be sure.

More news when we have it…

Here’s a shot of Aberdeen being all gigantic and pregnant. She probably won’t be so big tomorrow evening!

We haven’t even managed to tell the amusing story of the last goat birth, and now Aberdeen is in labor!

She didn’t want to go into her house tonight, and seemed nervous. A check of the ligaments to either side of her tail found nothing – they had gone soft. This generally means that a goat is 12-24 hours from giving birth.

I set up the baby monitor while Teri made sure the birthing kit was ready, and we are about to go to sleep to the greatly amplified sound of Koko chewing her cud.

It seems like whenever we have cool stuff to write about, there’s not actually any time to write it. And when we have time to write, that’s when things are slower around here and there’s not so much to say.

In case you’re wondering, we do still plan to tell you the story of Drama Queen’s labor and birth, hopefully before Aberdeen enters her labor (though by now it may be somewhat anti-climatic, it’s still a cool story, with emergency late-night phone calls and amazing feats of goat midwifery).

And we also have lots of stories about learning to milk a goat, and about a first-time freshener (never been milked before) learning how to be milked. There’s been a lot of ups and downs – the ups include the first morning she actually waited at the gate for us and ran of her own free will to the milking stanchion for her treat, and fresh-that-morning Drama milk in our daily coffee and chai; the downs include kicked-over buckets and spilled milk, and currently some digestive issues that seem to be lowering her milk production to just enough for her babies (with none left over for us).

Also there’s the stories of our little Shygirl hen going broody, which means she’s sitting on a clutch of eggs, most of them not even hers (once she went broody, the other hens started laying their eggs under her). As Peter mentioned in his previous post, she now has her very own broody box where the other hens can’t reach her, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for some baby chicks in about 1 1/2 weeks. Meanwhile, the other 2 hens were upset enough at the change in flock dynamics that they pretty much stopped laying in the nest boxes. Now that Shygirl is in her own space, one of them has started using the boxes again, but the other one still has her secret hidden nest out in the trees somewhere. (Anyone up for an egg hunt? I’m tired of looking, and tired of realizing yet again that my chicken is smarter than I am.)

And then there’s the stories of the babies and their diarrhea, which lead to lots of research that said diarrhea can KILL baby goats, which then lead to taking fecal samples from all three adult goats over to our friend/neighbor/savior’s house (author of the fabulous Goat Health Care) to borrow her microscope and learn how to do a fecal exam (most likely cause of diarrhea in goat kids – worms or other parasites passed on from the rest of the herd or their environment). The adults all tested fine – the babies are over their diarrhea and happy and healthy – probably they just had some digestive upset because they’d started eating solid foods like mom does. (But hoo boy! Looking at goat poo under a microscope is FUN! We’re already lusting after our own ‘scope, and planning fecal exams for all the animals. No really, we are. We don’t own a TV, you see…)

And probably not last, and certainly not least, there’s the story of our approximately 3,000 new animals we’ll be bringing home tomorrow. Yes, I said 3,000. Tomorrow is the day we drive to Eugene to pick up our package of honeybees. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks reading up on the art of beekeeping. The main part of our hive is set up and ready to go, and some of our fruit trees are already in bloom, awaiting our newest residents. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories to tell about getting them settled into their new home.

And then instead of 11 animals with anywhere from 2-10 more on the way, we’ll have 3,011 animals with anywhere from 2-10 still on the way.

And oh yeah, we’re way behind on our planting…

EDITED TO ADD: Oops, I thought I had read that 1 pound is equal to approximately 1,000 bees. Found out this morning when we picked up our 3 pound box that it actually contains about 10,000 bees. So we now have 10,000 more mouths to feed! Wish us luck, we’ll be hiving them soon…

Our chicken Shygirl has gone broody – this means she’s decided it’s time for some babies, so she has planted herself in a nesting box to incubate the eggs which we hope are beneath her. For the next few weeks, if all goes well, she will only leave the nest briefly to eat and defecate. Not wanting to disturb her, we have no photo, but it’s kind of funny to see her all hunkered down, looking very wide and flat, the better to cover all the eggs.

When one hen goes broody, it can be a stress on the others (the favorite nesting box is always occupied), and they will also try to lay their eggs under the broody hen, eventually resulting in a mountain of eggs that can’t be kept warm enough. That’s why I built this box yesterday, to give Shygirl a safe place to incubate and to stop the other birds from laying eggs under her (or wherever the heck they have been laying them lately! Some happy raccoon probably knows but we don’t).

The back 1/3 of the box will be filled with hay and smushed down to make a hollow for her nest, and the front part will hold small food and water dishes. It has no bottom, so she can drop her chicken poops onto the bedding beneath the box. It looks like a little bird jail, but it’s all a brooding hen wants – privacy and nearby food and water.

This evening at dusk, when they’re winding down, we will move the brooding box into the darkest corner of the henhouse and attempt to transplant eggs and hen into it…that should be fun =p

The box itself is made from one cut-up shipping pallet, a few screws, and some of the chicken-wire that held our potato mounds together last year. The top is now hinged, so the front 12″ can be opened for changing food and water. The entire top is also removable for transport and cleaning.

I bet you’ll have no trouble believing that this was built without any written plans, but it is sturdy, mostly recycled, and I think it will work very well.

Here it is with the lid removed:

Here’s the lid, made of 3/4″ plywood so it’s too heavy for our little chickens to mess with:

…and here’s Daks “helping”:

The full story of the birth of Drama’s babies is coming, we promise – in the meantime, here’s this…

We’re too busy to take photos when we’re actually milking, but for anyone who wondered exactly how that milking stand worked, here it is with an occupant happily munching away at her grain ration: