madcow
Loving the herd life
Bruce came running in about 4 this afternoon and said Nell had kidded. She had 2 doelings, a black and white one with the floppy ears of a Nubian (from daddy) and a brown and white one with the little LaMancha ears from Nell! They both were already cleaned up and dry when we found them, but from their lack of energy we could tell neither had nursed. The little black and white one was the one we were the most concerned about, because she definitely had been born first and was the smallest of the two. She was almost completely lethargic and we had to milk some colostrum from Nell and bottle feed the little girl and she got maybe a teaspoon down. She wasn't actively sucking, but we slowly dripped her the milk and we could tell she swallowed it. It wasn't too long before she seemed to have some energy. While that was going on we managed to get the other baby to actually nurse. Nell is a FF and she really wasn't sure about the nursing part and the flies are just terrible this year and she kept kicking the brown one off, but she was determined and finally nursed. Nell settled down after that, but the flies were still making nursing for the babies difficult in that they would have to try to locate a teat, but Nell would have to kick to rid herself of a fly and the baby would have to start again. After the black one got some energy we put her up to nurse and it didn't take her long before she was latched on and going at it. Both babies visibly perked up after a good feeding and I made sure both urinated before leaving them alone, and had nursed at least one more time. Without any further waiting, here are pictures of the cuties: