Well, today was my local 'Longford Scrappers' fortnightly get together AND it was also the due date for 'Patch' to have her baby . . . but would she we were wondering?
Well . . . after arriving home from my scrapping time, I didn't have to wait long to find out . . . I opened the car door to the sounds of a bleating baby goat. I raced up to the paddock and to my wonderful surprise, there stood a very newborn baby boer goat - I'd say only just born a short time ago!
I was so excited and hoping that 'Patch' might have another, I ran back to the house to get the camera. I'd never seen a baby animal being born in real life and just incase 'Patch' did indeed have twins, I wanted to capture the moment!
I ran back to the paddock - I'd only been gone about 5 minutes - and was so very disappointed to see that 'Patch' had indeed had twins BUT I'd missed it . . . the second baby had just been born! Oh bugger! If only I'd waited that little bit longer!
Oh well - not to worry . . . here's a couple of VERY newborn photos that I took moments later!
This was the first one born . . . a little boy . . . and below was the second one born . . . another little boy!
Well - unfortunately, the story didn't end there . . . after staying a little while to watch, I decided to go and send through some of the photos to family as I would have a chance later on because Adam has swimming lessons and then I was off to do my Level 2 First Aid Course tonight. I suppose I'd been gone about half an hour and then returned to check on them.
To my absolute horror, the second little boy was covered in ants . . . his mother hadn't licked him clean and these small black ants were just all over him. I guess she had kind of rejected him. Oh my goodness! What was I going to do - there were too many to brush away. I decided to run back to the house and get some warm water and towels and upon returning, I picked the little bleating guy up - he was so much smaller than his brother - stood him in the water and attempted to wash all the ants off him.
The ants were in his eyes, his nose and as they ran all over my arms were biting me too but eventually, I did get there - I got all the ants off and I wrapped him in a towel and held him close - surprisingly his bleating stopped. My only concern then was now that he'd been partially cleaned, would his mother accept him OR was I going to end up having to bottle feed this little guy.
'Patch' and the first born goat were now settled down in the shed, so I carefully leaned in and handed her the second little guy I'd just cleaned up . . . thankfully, he stumbled towards her, fell over close to her and then she began licking him. I had my fingers crossed that later she would feed him but at least it was a start - she wasn't pushing him aside.
I had to leave them to go and pick the boys up from school BUT by the time I returned, I was delighted to see 'Patch' feeding BOTH of her boys . . . thank goodness! Now we just had to keep our fingers crossed that she would continue to do so and that the littlest one would make it through the night! Hopefully my intervention had saved his life.
Until next time,
