If you've been following along, you'll recall that I began Friday morning checking on my very pregnant goat before dawn. A second check at 8 am and a third check at 10 am showed her much the same. But after hiving a swarm of bees, the 11:30 am check presented a very different picture:

Some goats may lie like this normally. But, to me, the visual was an obvious sign of labor. Artemesia had made a little nest in the new hay I'd laid down the night before, and her hind legs were stretched out rather than tucked underneath. Then, as I watched, she experienced a minor contraction. The time had come at last.

So I rushed back to the trailer and grabbed the bare minimum birthing kit --- two old towels, a watch, a notebook, and a bite of lunch for me. I'd offered Artemesia a portion of Nutri-Drench that morning mixed with molasses and oats just to be on the safe side and she'd only eaten half of it, so I knew I had some emergency sustenance on hand for the mother-to-be.

When I returned to the goat barn, it felt like Artemesia had been waiting for me. Her contractions came closer and closer together as she began to push out what looked like a scary big, dark thing...but which was actually a liquid-filled membrane.

The beginning part of her labor was a bit slow, giving me plenty of time to second-guess everything up to and including getting my favorite goat knocked up in the first place. But she didn't appear to be in pain (although she was obviously working).

Then, right at noon, Artemesia began pushing in earnest. She cried a couple of times...and out popped kid number one. I didn't know at the time, but this was a baby girl.

I only had time to pull the doeling's nose out of the sac of liquid (which hadn't entirely burst) before Artemesia was licking her...and pushing out kid number two (a boy) at the same time.

Artemesia proved to be the world's best mother immediately. She licked and licked and licked at those kids, not even taking the time to stand up and get the placenta the rest of the way out for quite a while. (It had mostly passed and clung to her butt for about an hour anyway, so I guess there was no hurry.)

I helped her out by drying the kid she wasn't currently working on, then swapping them around so each got a bit of towel action and a bit of motherly TLC. That's when I took the time to peer at the kids' privates and discover that the first kid --- a little paler in color with a subtle dark streak down the middle of her back --- was a girl. The redder kid who turned out to be a bit more adventurous was a boy. Maybe you can tell that the boy is the one in my lap in the photo above while the girl is shown to the left?

Finally, Artemesia decided she could lick just as well standing up as lying down, and I began pushing kids toward her teats. Unlike Abigail, Artemesia wasn't averse to the idea of having her teats tugged on, but she was so intent on licking that she didn't give the kids much opportunity to drink. The youngsters also had a little trouble figuring out how to push those tremendous teats into their tiny mouths.

But after a short while, I'd seen milk go down both kids' gullets. I breathed a big sigh of relief --- my job was pretty much done.

Actually, I planned to go home and rest for a while. I'd woken at 5:30 a.m. worried about my herd and now I felt like I'd been through the wringer even though Artemesia was the one who did all the work. Plus, my hands were covered with goop and I wanted to bring the new mother some molasses water to round out the Nutri-Drench, alfalfa pellets, and hay she'd immediately started glomming down once the kids were licked dry.

But my darling doe didn't want me to go. She'd barely made a peep during the entire birth episode, but as soon as I headed to the door she began to cry. "Don't leave me!" (Yes, her sentence was entirely understandable even if she didn't use words.)

I plugged my ears and left anyway, though, and Artemesia figured it was worth it when I returned five minutes later with that after-birth pick-me-up. And, speaking of after-birth, the placenta had fallen away from her rear end while I was gone, allowing me to scoop it out to Lucy...who'd been waiting patiently in the wings the entire time.

I sat with our new family for about another hour while everyone slowly got to know each other and then finally succumbed to exhaustion.

And once the cuddle pile was fully formed, Artemesia let me leave without crying. She and her twins were ready for a good long nap.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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