Winsome Kids!

On May 8th I had plans to travel to Granbury Texas for a three day class on Italian cheese making, but May 7th rolled around and Winsome still had not given birth and was showing no signs.
My sister was staying home and was planning on milking and feeding the kids for me, but was, understandably, not happy about the idea of handling a birth. So we had been praying every night that Winny would hurry up and have those kids!
Well, at 5:00am on the 8th, she did! My dad is a night owl and it happened that he was up in his office near the goat barn at that time, not able to fall asleep, and heard the dogs barking. He poked his head out the door and heard Winny yelling at the top of her lungs, so he called us in the house and ran out just in time to catch the first baby boy! I met him on the path to the house as he was carrying the baby in, and went to Winny. My sister soon joined me. Winny was so big we knew she had to have more then one!
We waited for maybe 5-10 minutes, standing over her with a lantern and a flashlight, and then we saw a bubble start to appear. After that there was not much time before Winny, standing, dropped the second baby in my arms. I gave him to my sister who took him immediately into the house. I stayed with Winny for another 20 minutes to be sure there were no more babies.
The second baby turned out to be a boy too, a gorgeous broken Chamois. His big brother was a Chamois with adorable little round, brown wattles tipped in black. They both weighed almost exactly 9 pounds! Poor Winny had been carrying around 18 pounds of kid! We gave the boys their colostrum mix and they finished their first bottle in less then 20 minutes!
Winsome had it rough because every year in the past she had raised her kids herself, so she knew what was missing at the end of her labor. She searched through all the bedding and licked every object that could possibly be a kid; a bucket, a piece of wood, a mound of hay, me.. When I tried to milk her she only let down maybe 2 or 3 squirts per teat. I gave her a break and tried again later that day, but got the same thing. I soon had to leave for the class, so my sister tried again for me one or two more times that day, and milked her several times each day while I was gone, but she didn't start freely letting down her milk until maybe a week after the birth of her kids, even though her udder got hard and swollen. She wanted her kids to have that milk! Poor girl. It's hard to take kids from a doe that has raised them before..

So now all of 2014's kids are born! We ended up with 6 in total, 3 bucklings and 3 doelings. I couldn't be happier with them all! King really seems to have done a good job of improving length, height, pastern strength and overall refinement to the kids as well as throwing a few wattles, neat colors, and they all his super expressive eyes! I see a lot of their mama's characteristics in a few of them too! Can't wait to see how they grow!