On February 11, Abigail suddenly started looking a lot less pregnant. Maybe this is when the babies did the two-week pre-kidding change of position? Either way, I'm pretty sure now that our doe is due at the second possible date, which would be around March 4 if you go by the 150 day gestational period of a standard-sized goat, or around February 28 if you go by the 145 days that miniature goats average. (As a semi-standard goat, I'd say Abigail might be due right in the middle.)

We're all enjoying the bit of breathing room from thinking there will be kids at any moment. Plus, by stocking up on hay and upgrading our manger, daily chores have been kept to a minimum. Less hay dropped to the ground means that our storage shed still contains 7.5 of the 9 bales we put away near the end of January. We should definitely have plenty of hay to last until spring.

On the other hand, Abigail has been a bit crankier lately, presumably because those unborn kids are starting to weigh her down. She kicks Artemesia out of the shed unless the weather's really bad in order to keep the doeling out of her hair. "Why don't you go see if you can stand on that ice-covered barrel?" says our pregnant doe. "Oh, goodie!" answered Artemesia. "That sounds like loads of fun!"

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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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