The snow melted off and we’re excited for spring, and the baby goats (kids) that are coming soon.
Sadly one of our first time momma’s gave stillbirth twins yesterday. Marbles seemed healthy otherwise and has given no indication of any pregnancy problems. Now though, we did have a problem.
She is fully ready to nurse twins but no twins to nurse, and we are on the clock to figure something out. There are three options:
1. Do nothing and hope she doesn’t develop mastitis (infection!)
2. Do something. Do the work of manually pulling her milk several times a day.
3. Find a bottle baby goat to graft onto her.
We chose option 3 and found a very nice couple a few hours away on Craigslist l. We loaded up the kids and picked up Mr. Mutton, a bottle fed buckling 9 days old.
Part of this process is setting momma Marbles up in a small space that doesn’t make her feel isolation but does keep her with the baby.
So we took a pair of gates, a t-post and some heavy zip ties to make a partition.
Using a stone under the white gate helps it swing in and out freely.
The Marbles and Mr. Mutton grafting project is ongoing, more to come on that!