Carmen's twin bucks

 Thursday ended with me heading to bed around 1 a.m. because I was flying from all the coffee I'd consumed in Urbana before heading home for a two hour drive in the dark. My sweet, sweet goats all avoided going into labor during the night. I'm so glad they got that memo! Friday morning around 8:00, I went out to the barn and checked everyone's tail ligaments and udders. My best guess was that Carmen, Lizzie, and Viola would all kid before the day was done, but I also knew I had to get down to Urbana to pick up Caboose and her kids. On one hand I was worried about having two goats in labor at the same time, but on the other hand, I hoped they'd give birth soon, each about an hour apart, so I could leave for Urbana by about 1:00.

Around 10:00, Carmen gave birth to two bucklings. Although Carmen doesn't just plop down and start shooting out kids like Sherri and her daughters, she does make it look pretty easy. She bleated a little to let me know I needed to be on hand to help her clean up the kids, but otherwise, things seemed to be going easily enough for her. She has a habit of giving birth standing, sometimes even walking, so it can be a challenge to catch the kid. I usually spend lots of time walking on my knees behind her when she's in labor. And this year was no different. She had her rear legs spread widely as she sort of waddled from side to side, taking a step, making a little noise, pushing, taking a step, and so on. And swoosh! Welcome to the world, little dude!

For the second one, however, she decided to plop down with her rear in the corner of the kidding pen. The thing you have to know about the kidding pens is that we put a shelf across the back of all of them, so we would have a place to put kidding supplies that are out of the goat's reach. Carmen had her rear in the corner under the shelf. No big deal, I thought. I'll just crawl under there and reach over her body and pick up the kid when it's born. That part of the plan worked just fine. I picked up the second kid, also a buck, and dried him off. But then I forgot there was a shelf above my head when I went to get up. Ouch!

Mike came out to check on me and immediately ran the towels into the house for washing, because we knew at some point over the weekend we would run out if too many goats kidded closely together. And from the looks of Viola, she was getting close. Viola is normally a very in-your-face goat, and she was obviously off in her own little world, so I knew I didn't have much time to eat lunch before she kidded.