Or is that Bad News and Good News?
Well, anyway, I said in my post in March's thread that we had two straggler's to kid, as they had come back into season late on and they were due May and July.
Well, they are not due in May and July.
Bronwyn, the OH's first goat, who was supposed to be due in July, came back in season this morning. She is now four years old, and has only kidded once (in July), producing one dead male kid. If we had mated her this morning, she would have been due in August- if she had held at all. Her fertility seems to be a real issue, and whether the blue tongue jab was the root of her problems or not, I don't know. She has now been pregnant three times, but only kidded once. So, what to do with her? She is still milking, we have been trying to dry her off, but had only got down to milking her every 6 days, seem to not be able to stop her totally. So we are going back to milking her everyday- she does milk well, so it seems best to do that. We do know someone who is looking for a goat to produce milk for the house, so I think we will offer her free of charge. She is hard to milk as she has big teats, so cannot be milked by someone new to milking, fortunately this person has kept goats for over 30 years.
That was the bad news, the good news is, I was watching my milker last night, and I could see the kids kicking inside her quite violently. The last time she was mated was the 27th December, which means she shouldn't be due until the end of May. That is far too early for us to be seeing kicking like that- so... It looks like she may have held to the earlier AI we did, which makes her due on either the 15th or the 21st April! Not only that, but it means I can keep a male out of her as she will have held to the unrelated male. All is good again for my herd.
And I suppose the good point of both the good news and the bad news is that we will have kidding over by the 20 something of April.
Beth
Topic: Good News and Bad News (Read 4051 times)
