Sometimes Love comes as a surprise.

Prem Goati - our little Love Goat was born on Friday the 7th Feb at Noon.  This is related to The Great Debate    post back in December as to if Poppy was pregnant or not... thinking no, she was taken back for breeding last month.  

So you can imagine my surprise on Friday when Paramjyoti went to give the goats some water and came out yelling like there was a cougar in the yard!   Narayan started yelling. "baby goat mum there's a baby goat!".

It took us 4 hours to get him responsive.  Not sure how long he had been there (maybe as long as 2 hours since we did the watering last) but he was initially bleating, but then quickly got very quiet and non responsive.  We took him back out to his mum to see if she would nudge him into life but at -25 it quickly became apparent that we needed to get him warm and fast.

We put him in a warm bath, submerging his body but keeping his head up.  Dripping some colostrum into his mouth, one drip at a time. (Yes suddenly we also had to learn how to strip and milk mama goat...)

He seemed to go to sleep and although was warm on the outside his mouth was still cold.  So we decided to Kangaroo him.  I stripped from the waste up and got a hot water bottle.  Sandwiched him in between me and the hot water bottle with his head on my heart.  I wrapped us both up in a towel and sat in front of the woodstove...  After about 30 mins of this... he started to make noises and twitch his limbs.

 Meanwhile Paramjyoti was figuring out how to get more colostrum out of Poppy who was in clear distress that her baby was gone.   Too cold to take him back outside he has slept the first 2 nights by the fire and will again tonight.  Spending visits outside with mum,  at -20 - -9 its still too cold to leave him out there for too long.  He was very weak, but on day 2 now, he is starting to get curious about his new world.


Welcome to the Niwas family Prem!