Annabelle Delivers

When I went out to feed the chickens around eight this morning, Annabelle was bleating constantly. I checked her backside and a single thin stream of yellow mucus fell to the straw. Labor!



Good thing, too, as her rotund shape has made movement challenging.

At 9:30, Annabelle’s bleats sounded like labor should sound, and she appeared to have contractions regularly. Expecting labor imminently, I called Phil, and then Abigail and Isaiah. Phil soon returned to the office, as the biting wind sapped any eagerness he may have felt for a kid vigil.



Abigail and Isaiah enjoyed chasing chickens and talking about feathers, but I soon realized that all labor signs stopped once we three spectators arrived. Perhaps Annabelle would progress with a bit more privacy.

At 10:30, I realized I hadn’t heard Annabelle’s labor bleats in some time. I went out to find her alone in the kidding pen with a kid half out! She grunted for a minute or two, long enough for Phil to join me. At the last second, she turned so that I could see only her front, but Phil watched the actual birth from his vantage point. I just heard it.

How amazing! The tiny sneeze and first breath, the immediate care Annabelle gave to lick the little guy off. Unlike the sheep, she was already in her pen and protected from the elements, so I really didn’t need to do anything for this kid. Thrilling, really, to sit beside a seconds’ old newborn.

Phil returned to work, while I watched the baby stand up for the first time.



A sac appeared out of Annabelle’s backside, and I thought, “Oh, that must be the afterbirth. Funny—she was so round, I would have expected another baby.”



And then two little white hooves appeared! Another baby was coming! And I was in the perfect spot to see it all! I took photos, imaging that THIS would be the triumph of my blogging career. After all, it’s not every day you get to see a goat birth. But the dim lighting and, I suppose, my excitement rendered the photos almost useless.



But again—a tiny breath! Another tiny boy! Below you can see the firstborn, standing on shaky legs to the left, while the mother cleans off the just-born second kid.



The first, though born steaming began to shiver, so I used towels to dry him more, and let Annabelle work on her newborn. I am amazed at how challenging it is to get all the fluid out of the thick goat pelts. I suppose licking isn’t the best way to actually dry an animal.

I put iodine on the navel, and used my little hanging scale to weigh them. The first was 6 pounds, 14 ounces; the second was 6 pounds, 10 ounces. Good, healthy weights.

While the babies appeared to be desperately trying to nurse, Annabelle leisurely drank some molasses water, ate some hay, licked her boys off. I finally grew so distressed, I had to leave. By 12:30, Isaiah and Abigail went to see the babies with me, and Annabelle still wasn’t letting the kids nurse. As I did for both sets of sheep, I milked out some colostrum into a glass and gave it to the kids with a drench. This perked them up a bit, and the second born managed to find the teat.

Immediately, she began delivering the afterbirth. The two children and I watched, fascinated, as the opaque organ gradually emerged. That was a relief to me, but then the first little kid looked like he was approaching the danger zone: hunched back, miserable appearance.



Poor baby! I fed him more colostrum, but it took another hour or two until he found the nipple (with my help) and ate for himself.

Finally, both boys seemed to be out of imminent danger.



And, oh, are they cute! More curious and alert than lambs, I haven't caught them sleeping yet. Here's the second born, looking for the source of the strange clucking noise.



Annabelle is an Alpine, with ears that go up. Sire Bubby is a Nubian, with ears that go down. We have one with up ears and one with down ears.



Their pelts are luxurious; once cleaned off, they remind me of a short-haired cat with their softness.



These were the first animals conceived and born on our farm. Delightful!

Perplexing, though: what we imagine should be “natural” has not yet happened. I would naturally expect lambs and kids to be born and thrive. But what we have: Ashley’s birthing in a blizzard; Acorn’s stillborn lamb blocking the birthing canal; and now Annabelle’s easy labor with kids almost starving—this is all quite human intensive.

Phil wonders if the kids would actually die without my interference. Possibly not. But how horrible to have healthy kids born, then lose them because their inexperienced first-time mom couldn’t figure out how to get them to eat.

There is a balance I don’t yet understand between domesticated animals and man, between necessary support and unwelcome interference.

I confess that I want my life to be a math problem, with one right answer that I reach every time. But there is no one right answer to anything, not even in the easy birthing of two kids. I find freedom and possibility of each choice and decision a weight to bear.