Murphy was our next doe to kid this year, and somehow we missed the birth again! Since we missed it last year, Haley was checking on Murphy every several hours Wednesday, and even overnight Wednesday, and on Thursday she was checking every hour. Haley checked on her after milking Prim at like 8:15 PM, and there were no signs of labor. Murphy was just standing in the kidding stall eating hay. Then we watched an hour of TV, and Haley went out to check again at 9:30, and there were 3 babies on the ground, the last one of which had just been born! Haley said next year, she's just going to have to live in the barn for 48 hours if she wants to see the birth.
Once again Murphy did a great job by herself, and the babies who were born first were quite dry.
Murphy had a girl who looks just like her who Haley named Arwen, like from Lord of the Rings, because someone on her goat forum desperately wanted Murphy's name to be Arwen, so much so that this person still calls Murphy "Arwen".
She also had 2 bucklings, a white one who we named Peter Lake, after the main character in Winter's Tale, and a caramel one who a repeat buyer of ours has a tentative reservation on, and Haley likes the names she chooses, so we're going to let her pick his registered name. We are just calling him "Caramel" for now. The boys, particularly Peter, were having some trouble drinking consistently on their own for the first 24 hours, but they finally got the hang of it last evening after Haley milked Murphy a little bit to relieve some pressure on her udder. Here's some pictures of them. You can also see Nova, one of our LGDs, in one picture. Her and her brother Mason always park themselves at the barn when there are new babies, because they feel they need extra protection.
