Hi all,
I have had to bring myself to update this. Christina started to kid on Tuesday morning, and I had to toddle off to work to bring in the pennies. Mum and ALex were at home with her. She gave up pushing by 10am, so mum investigated and found the problem was two kids, both coming forwards at the same time. Mum tried but was unable to kid her, so we had to call the vet, who also had great difficultly. She did eventually manage to get out all three male kids.
The second kid who probably had the most trauma from kidding was very weak, and died within a couple of hours. Christina didn't produce any afterbirth, and was in shock from the handling when I got home from work. She looked awful when I saw her first, but we got her rugged up, and persuaded her to drink some glucose/treacle water, which she had refused to do earlier. She wouldn't touch food, but did look brighter. When mum went out at 6am, it was clear she was not going to make it, and she died 20 minutes later.
So we have two wee boys, who of course need feeding. Fortunately we have Romily running through and she is giving about 4 litres a day. We will buy some dried milk as an in case to supplement her milk until the next goats are due to kid in 4 weeks.
Sadly we never had a daughter from Christina to carry her line on, in fact the boys are the first pure bred BA kids we have from her. She was a breed champion, winning 7 1st firsts out of 8 BGS recognised shows she went to and winning 6 BCC's, gaining her breed championship as a first kidder. She lost out on a BCC at the Royal Highland Show as she threw a strop and kicked the bucket of milk over! She then ran through last year as we couldn't get her to hold in kid and despite not having a huge quantity of milk, still was awarded BCC's, and was placed in the top six line up several times in 2009. My 11 year old neice took complete charge of her last year, and would not only show her in the show ring, but prepare her for the show/judging and milk her at the shows as well. She had a fantastic relationship with my AN milker Kream, they loved each other to bits, but they had a very sado-masochistic relationship! Essentially she beat up Kream, who was quite happy with this as she would just lie down and eat lots of food while Christina had a strop! She was very determined to get her own way, and ran her herd of goats with an iron hoof. I'm so sorry we don't still have her.
