Poor Spike....

This morning, I headed out to the barn to check on things and feed the goats and chickens. I got to within about 30' of the barn and heard a tiny voice that told me the baby from yesterday was up and hungry. I went in to feed her mom and the other glutenous fur balls.

We have one doe that tries to (and usually DOES) push the others around. She is the first to breakfast and the last to leave. This morning, I noticed right away that she was late to the buffet table. I went into the other part of the barn and found one new baby on the ground and the other just finishing being delivered. This was the doe we expected to birth awhile ago because she was so huge. She almost looked like she had 3 or 4 babies in her! Two was the final count, though, and she's STILL fat!

We built a new barn this summer (attached it to the old one). One of the "rooms" in the old part was full of hay from last summer. I have been gradually feeding it down this winter so I can use the room as a "maternity ward". I still had 30 bales in it, but managed to still have enough room to section off a spot about 6' x 10' for mom and the twins (boy and a girl). I was planning on doing it today anyway, but didn't expect to fill it so soon.

Mom - the one we named "Bossy" because of her demeanor - is a favorite of our young Billy named Spike. He hangs around her all day and sleeps snuggled up real close to her. She lets him eat breakfast every morning, without even trying to head butt him away. He is only about half the size of her, so it can be comical sometimes to see them together.

Tonight, I came back in from the barn about 8:00 pm. I checked all the goats while I was out there. Everybody was snuggled into their beds of straw - except Spike. He was wandering the halls, looking for his "girlfriend". Poor guy. I doubt that she would want him snuggling tonight, though. Her kids are more important right now....

While I was out in the barn today, I found 4 of our cats all snuggled into a wheelbarrow I have in the barn. I had the barrow filled with used bedding from the goat pens. It is mostly straw and hay with some little black "jelly beans" mixed in. It must have been warm for the cats, though. They stayed like this for 3-4 hours.


The only camera I had with me was my cell phone, so it is a little fuzzy. You can make out four heads. There was a fifth cat joining them for awhile, but she was camera shy.