Priscilla's Babies Are Here!!!!

Priscilla, the day she gave birth

Sunday, March 18th Priscilla was not a happy girl.  As you can see in the above picture she spent most of the day in the barn looking out the door.  Longing to go outside and enjoy the sunshine.  Priscilla knew that she was ready to have her babies.

We checked her every few hours. In the middle of the afternoon we noticed some milky white discharge.  This usually means that labor will follow soon.

Around 7pm Jamie & I went down and fed everyone and we noticed that she was breathing a little faster and groaning a bit so we decided to put her in the birthing stall so she wouldn't be bothered by the other goats.

8:15pm I went down to check on her and sure enough she was in full labor and pushing.  I called Jamie on the cell phone and told him to get the kids and the baby bag and come on down.

I sat with her for a bit while she was pushing and noticed that she just wasn't progressing at all.  I was able to call a new friend, Billie Sue that has lots experience with goats. 
Billie was able to tell me what I needed to do.

I had to go in and help.  Now at this point I am about going crazy with worry in my head.  Thinking I'm going to hurt her but I knew if I didn't go ahead then she and her babies could die.  I was so grateful to have Billie on the phone with us.  She was very calm and knew just what to say to help us out.

Jamie sat by Priscilla's head and held her tight and I went in and felt around.  I was told that I needed to feel to see what body parts were presenting themselves first.  It took me a long time to figure this out.  A hind leg hip was what was coming first.  I went in a little further and found the head and face.  I then turned the baby around so it would be delivered feet and face first, the proper way.

When I went in, I have to say it was the neatest feeling ever.  It was really hard work especially since Priscilla was having contractions and every time she had a contraction it would squeeze my wrist and arm.  The coolest thing though was while I was looking for the babies head I felt another head too.

Once the baby was turned around it delivered pretty quickly and it was a BOY!!! A little black boy with white markings.  He seemed to have trouble breathing, so thankfully we were still on the phone with Billie and she told me what I needed to do to get him breathing again.  While I was doing all this with the 1st baby, Priscilla delivered her 2nd baby which was a GIRL!!! Jamie helped clean off her face and get her breathing. She was brown with white markings. By this time both little ones were breathing on their own and doing good.  Priscilla is such a good mama, she started licking them to clean them and she was "talking" away to them. Next came the 3rd baby which was a BIG BOY!!! This baby was much bigger in size than the other two and he was red with white markings.

As far as we can tell all 3 were delivered between 9:00pm and 9:30pm.  It was amazing to see how quickly they stood up, went to the bathroom and then started to nurse.

It was an absolute amazing experience and I was so glad the kids were there to see it.

The following pictures are of the babies just about an hour old.

Baby # 1 looking to nurse

Baby # 2 standing

Baby # 3 cuddling with mama

After staying to make sure they had all nursed and were doing fine I went up to the house.

The next day I went down to the barn in the morning and everyone was doing wonderfully.  Babies were starting to poop which is always a good sign.  Priscilla was looking wonderful too.  I made sure to clean up the stall a bit and put fresh bedding down.  I also let Priscilla eat in there so nobody would bother her.  I figured she would be sore.  The babies stood and walked around for a bit but then they found spots to take naps in between play time.

These pictures are of them at one day old.

Babies napping

Baby Boy 1

Baby Girl

Baby Boy 2

We will be selling these babies and even though their new homes are going to give them their permanent names I wanted to name them for while they are here.

The American Dairy Goat Associate assigns a letter for every year for the babies that are born.  The letter is used when you tattoo the babies ears for identification purposes.  This year, 2012 the letter is C.  So I thought that all the kids born here should be named with C names.

I had already picked out Cole for the black one and Hailey came up with Carter for the red boy.  Drew thought that he should get to name the girl and took forever to figure out a name we could all agree on.  The little girls name is Chloe.

I'll be posting some more pictures in another update about the babies first time outside.

Check back to see!!