No new baby goats this morning (just the 4 from the last few days). The mama who's been gigantic for the last month is due today, so hopefully she'll have lots of healthy babies! I predict 4 (and I predict she'll have them at the most obnoxious time...I have lots of meetings today, but I have even more meetings tomorrow that are way less flexible, so today would be great!)
@BashStKid Yeah, I think it's probably because my buck this year is fairly incompetent.... but so far everyone who was supposed to has been pregnant, so not too bad.
@sundogplanets long-term, would it be worth it to install a web cam of some sort in the barn so you can easily check-in on the animals?
Not sure how far the barn is from main house, but wi-if can goes very far through open air. I’d recommend Eufy for store-bought cams, but I have also brewed-my-own using a Raspberry Pi if you wanna DIY (including automatic infrared, too!)
@daphnesak I think about this option every year at goat baby time... maybe someday I'll actually do it (would also need a wifi repeater, which I've also been thinking about getting so I can attend zoom meetings from the barn haha)
Not snowing anymore. Going to take a quick outside screaming/check-on-goats break before a faculty meeting starts. I'm super grateful I can do all this via Zoom and check on goats in between, but this is too much Zoom for me...just 3 more days of this stupid time-suck committee (and writing up reports after) and then I'm DONE with it
(to be fair, I've learned a lot from being on the committee, I just wish it was a 2 year term instead of a 3 year term...almost done)
Still no new goats. Put the very pregnant goat back outside in the rain because she was annoyed about being in the barn. Now she can be annoyed about the rain instead...
Still no babies! Ugh this poor mama is so uncomfortable, and I will have to get up at 2am again. SIGGGHHHH. At least she's the last goat due to have babies for a little while, and maybe we'll be fully above freezing for the next batch...
...still no babies, and I have to be on campus most of the day today (mainly to help with the 2SLGBTQ+ in STEM conference my university is hosting that starts today, which I'm super excited about)
My 12yo is going to get home before me and we talked a lot about all the possible scenarios she could encounter with baby goats when she gets home, and she can text me for advice, and wow the farming/academia combo really doesn't work well sometimes 😬
Healthy quadruplets and healthy mama! She had babies just before I got home from campus, and my 12yo did indeed help her. I'm so proud! Having farm kids is super awesome.
Gosh I'm so excited I don't have to go out to the barn at 2am tonight.
Remind me never to be on a super-intense committee with many hours of meetings in the same week as baby goat births and also a conference I helped organize (on top of my usual student research help and research meetings and satellite pollution meetings). I am beat, and I still have a few more days of this to get through...
@sundogplanets Thank you for proving that you are just a human like us all.
I like your posts and I'm amazed about all the different kind of work you are combining.
I have been wondering how you keep doing all those things with so much passion.
Your posts give me energy. I hope this post gives back some of that energy.
Lots of respect!
@SRLevine It's a lot, but not super unusual. I had one goat last year who had 4 kids who all survived. (But she rejected all of them and we had to bottle feed them... so much work)
@qui_oui One of my goats had 4 babies last year! It's really weird that goats have 2 teats and regularly have up to 4 babies, while cows have 4 teats and almost never have anything but singles.
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