Just Another Lazy Saturday at the Farm

April 14th

Bob and Orville were working, putting in new fencing and Wes was helping me get the garden ready (for about the third time because I could never find time or the energy to plant before the weeds took over again), by tilling and bringing in wonderful compost from where I fed hay to the cows two years earlier.  About 2:00 I walked out to check on Bob and was astonished to find Daisy standing over by the barn with two, very fresh, new babies.

That was the first shocker of the day.  I knew she was preggers but didn't think she was due so soon.  (Will I ever be able to time due dates?  I doubt it unless I can record conception, like that's going to happen with three very determined bucks.)

About 3:00 p.m. I noticed Alex (another new mother that, unfortunately, got nailed unwittingly) showing signs and finally, around 6:00, I helped deliver a baby (dead, I'm sorry to say) that was breech.  Then . . . and then . . . well? . . . nothing was happening . . . but I felt pretty sure she still wasn't through with the "having babies" event.

At 8:00 I called the vet (who's really got to love me by now) and asked him what he thought I should do.  "Unfortunately, Helen Jane, I can't come down and help because I'm in Tulsa at my son's soccer match."  He said I had to "go in and access the situation," see if I felt any kicking, how it/they were positions, etc., because I couldn't let her go through the night if she had a baby wedged inside her -- all could be dead by morning.

At 10:00 p.m., about six more calls later and much angst, I finally exited the barn for the night.

After having delivered babies before, I felt fairly confident in pulling out the first baby.  Not so much the next ones.  Well, I "assessed" and the situation was two babies right on top of each other, both facing out.  I tried everything I could do to follow the vet's instructions via intermittent calls (yes, at least six.  Wonder who won that soccer match?)

I tried pushing one back in out of the way; following the top one's head to shoulder to a front leg to pull into position; and finally, giving up on a live birth, I started trying to pull the first one by its head just to get it out.  All to no avail.  Poor Alex, I had to tie her head to the barn railing and go in with both hands, but still I was not able to get that baby out.  Back to the vet - to follow his latest advice, I ran into the house and got a thin dog leash to use as a noose, got the noose around the head of the top baby and pulled, and pulled, and pulled - all the while poor Alex was yelling her head off and me feeling terrible about hurting her so.  I didn't think I had a choice -- I didn't want to lose her, so I had to sacrifice a baby.  Finally, sitting on the ground with my foot up against the barn and the strap wrapped around my hand, pulling with all my strength, the baby finally came out . . . dead of course.

Now on to the next one.  I really, really, really wanted it to be alive.  It wasn't, but I soooo wanted Alex to have a baby to tend, I tried everything I could think of -- cleaning it's face and mouth off, swinging it by its back legs, pressing a little on its lungs and, yes, using mouth-to-mouth -- well, not exactly, more like mouth-to-hand-forming-access-to-mouth -- I'm not totally "over the edge" . . . yet.

Needless to say I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, so I put the dead babies in a bucket, in my car so they would not attract any predator, and called Wes to see if he would come out the next morning and bury them, since I was heading to L.R. early.  When I told him they were in my car, he said, "Ms. Brown, you don't want those dead goats in your car -- put them in the dog pen."  Glad someone was thinking straight!

No longer a "kid."

I guess because I had spent so much time inside Alex and had dead baby smell on me, she thought I was her kid.  After the first one was born, she tried cleaning it, like they do, to dry it off and get it up and nursing.  When that was just too sad to watch any longer, I removed it from her sight while we waited for the next ones to be born.  In the meantime, she tried "cleaning" me, nibbling my neck, etc.  It didn't register with me that she was associating me with her baby.

For several days, she wandered the pasture calling for her babies and whenever she saw me, she would call louder, and then when I went out to her she would do her nibbling thing on me.  That was all pretty sad, plus I felt bad for her because I'm sure she needed udder relief, too.  A few days later she stopped and now seems to be doing okay.

If all of that would have happened closer to when Daisy's twins were born, I would have tried to give her one of those to raise, but I felt too much time had passed and Daisy's babies were already bonded to her.

Today


Think I have another "oops" mother.  Another one of my really small ones is looking suspiciously full-bodied.  I've been trying to convince myself that she was just a little chow-hound, but I've noticed that she is beginning to "bag up."  I hope soccer season is over soon.