Livestock Two doelings

Faroe

Un-spun
Segovia and Las Meninas were born at about 7:30 yesterday evening.

Segovia was up and on the teat right away. I'm not sure Meninas will make it - she is very tiny, and just doesn't look quite right. She also seems to have some congestion in her lungs. I have tried sucking it out several times, but can't seem to help her clear it.

She is better this morning, but not thru it. I've been giving her her milk in a bottle, so maybe she will catch up. Many years ago in IA, one of the ewes had a newborn lamb I never expected would live - just a tiny limp floppy thing that weighed nothing. Two weeks later, you couldn't have picked her out from the others.

Because of that experience, I'm reluctant to just put her down.
We'll see.
 

Faroe

Un-spun
Come on now.......where's the damn family pictures?!

We wanna see!

Ha, I can sort of work the digital camera. I have NO CLUE how to get the images onto a post.

Update: the little one has been able to nurse on her own. She can mostly stand and get around (one of her back legs also seems to be weak, and one eye is only half open.) Really don't know about this one.
 

Freeholder

This too shall pass.
It's hard to lose a little one. My thought on that is that I want to breed strong, healthy animals, and if I help the weak, unthrifty ones too much, I may end up breeding weak, unthrifty ones. So I try to help judiciously. I lost a couple of chicks out of the most recent hatch because of that, and decided later that I should have intervened (they'd pipped but never progressed any further -- I now believe that I didn't have the humidity high enough in the incubator, and I probably should have helped. But I also now have a thermometer that also reads humidity, so hopefully we won't have that problem again).

I guess it's always a learning experience. We had twins born here a little over two weeks ago, a buck and a doeling. The little buck was at least twice as big as the doe kid, and she seemed pretty weak. I thought at first that we might lose her, but she took a bottle well (I bottle-raise all my goat kids, normally). Now she's doing just fine, though she'd never catch up with her brother in size. But then, her mother is a small doe for a Nubian.

Kathleen
 

Faroe

Un-spun
I go by the same philosophy.

If she had hung on just languishing, I probably would have had to put her down. Simply no time or funds for unproductive animals. Esp. for the goats, since they eat a lot. It is a big investment to get a doe up the point where you can milk her.

Love raising baby chicks. I wanted to mail order more chicks this year, but I just have too much going on right now.
 
Top