Sheila Kids!

It's been awhile since I've wrote, raising dairy goats keeps you busy! I guess I'll divide the events I have to tell into several posts to make them more readable. :) 

On May 5th, at approximately 11:30am, Sheila kidded! She really didn't
show many signs at all before hand. I went out side check on her before I sat down for lunch, and she was in labor, with two little toes sticking out! She walked around like that for maybe 15-20 minutes, snorting and pawing and groaning. finally she laid down and really pushed and the farther out the baby came, the wider our eyes got. The head was HUGE! At least the same size as week old Emmy Lou's (if not bigger!) and dark brown, almost black in color.
When the baby finally came out fully, landing in my hands, I took a quick look and could not believe my eyes, the giant baby was a girl! I handed her over the gate and she was dried off with clean towels while I gave Sheila some grain and tried to comfort her.
 She was a bit stressed out and snorted with her hackles raised as she searched nervously around the barn. She is a first freshener and probably didn't know exactly what she was looking for, but her mothering instincts were strong.  Sheila is an interesting case because she is 4 years old and just now freshening for the first time! I prefer to have my does freshen as yearlings, or possibly as 2 year-olds if they are slow to mature, because it has been shown that does left unbred for longer can get fat built up in their mammary which makes their udder smaller and less productive then it would have been otherwise. But I bought Sheila as a three year old and she was actually supposed to have been bred before I picked her up. But I am still impressed with her udder, however small! Her teats are very uniform and of a nice size. Her orifices are also nice and big, making milking her fast and easy, although she did kick a bit on the milk stand the first few days...

As the baby girl dried off we saw her coloring and were further amazed! She is a rich mahogany color with a darker chocolate brown with a purplish tinge on her lower legs, back, tail, the inside of her ears and the top half of her head. My dad couldn't stop talking about her coloring all day! She weighed 9lbs and was taller then Emmy Lou and the twins as a newborn!
Today she is still the tallest kid in the bunch. She is also showing a sweet, alert, playful temperament  like her mama, Sheila. She learned to walk very quickly and runs around like a wild thing when we let her out to play! Wild blackberry leaves are her new favorite food!