Ella the Great and a Host of Pictures!

Well...Ella tried to make up for all my singles.

Ella is my main stay. She's almost the perfect goat.

I love the fact that-

-She's big and healthy

-Her babies are big and healthy

-She gives me lots of kids

-She gives me 3 gallons plus a day!

-She'll stay in milk as heavy as I want as long as I want

-She's sweet and easy to handle

What I do not like about Ella-

-Ella is sweet to people, but bossy to the other goats and will try to make the Boers stay outside in the rain. What a meanie!

-Sometimes her babies are just a bit to big

-And for the last two years she's tried delivering two 10lb+ kids at once! What's with that?

So, last year she had triplets and we lost one in delivery (the plain, big ol' boys made it and the spotty doe didn't, of course). She had two heads and only one leg and I couldn't sort it out. Sorry girl!

I was nervous about her delivery this year because of last year and because I'd had to have a vet out because she'd retained the afterbirth... I forgive her from all that extra trauma in her labor.

So...Anyways....

Last night she was in mild labor at about 7pm. I kept coming down and checking on her and it looked like things were progressing nicely. When pushing came to shoving, she delivered a whole new kid (unrelated to the water sack already out). A wobbly, but huge boy.

The other water sack should have given me enough red lights to investigate, but I didn't. I really don't like to go in there when I don't have too. I'm just so afraid of messing things up and introducing infection.

Well, she pushed out a head...no legs. She was continue to push, and with last year (two kids at once) I knew there was enough room for her to get the body out without those legs lined up. Well, my mistake. Pretty soon there was another head without legs!

Now I went in. Baby, baby everywhere! I couldn't find anything but long necks and legs where still to far down and there wasn't enough room for my hand. I could tell the bottom baby was getting crushed, so things were getting pretty frantic at this point. (I love Boers! They don't get bred for crazy long, slender necks. Legs are just a little closer.)

Well, she pushed and tried, but just couldn't get anywhere. I really didn't want to tear anything. We lost the bottom baby. Even without worrying about hurting the baby, I couldn't move anything.Things just got worse. The top baby was starting to fade. Oh Ella, I'm sorry! But I went as fare as I could and pushed and pulled that poor baby, until I finally was just barely able to find a front leg.

What relief! (Especially for Ella!)

The rest was pretty easy. All three does came out fairly well, but none with any legs positioned correctly. Poor Ella, just trying to bump my average back up to twins this year. :-) She's always picking up the slack. She's raised abut almost all my bottle babies on her milk alone.

We lost one doe, but she now has two exhausted (probably bruised) does and one very happy-go-lucky buck! They are so big!!! They dwarf all the other kids born in the last 10 days.

Ella is still alive and she didn't tare!!!!!! She's on Pen-G right now and hopefully she won't scar or get an infection.

The babies are less active then her normal kids, but they've been through a lot. We gave them their shots and got warm milk in their tummies. I crawled back into bed at about 2am so I could get back to check on them all at 5:30am and then get on to feeding the bottle babies and milking. What fun. I'm going to need a nap today.

We have one more try for us both next year, Ella, and if it doesn't work out your going to have to go in retirement. Poor girl.

Lesson learned-

You see an unrelated water sack - go in while you still can and push that baby down there! You get two heads and your stuck; no going back in there! When you think you have triplets or quadruplets in there and you don't see feet in the right spot, investigate.

It's always better to fix things before you're in danger of seriously damaging the doe or your working on a stress time frame well your losing a baby.

Be clean and treat for infection. It's better then this sort of situation.

Thank you God! A healthy Ella with a bonus of three babies is a huge blessing!

Here's Ella's track record-

2005 - Twins (does)

2006 - Twins (does)

2007 - Triplets (2 bucks, 1 doe)

2008 - Triplets (3 does)

2009 - Triplets (2 bucks, 1 doe)

2010 - Quadruplets (3 does, 1 buck)

That's a total of 17 babies for a seven year old doe that didn't start until she was two! And a 14:3 doe: buck ratio! You rock Ella!

Current Baby Count

4 ewes - 7 lambs (6 ewe lambs and 1 ram)

4 does - 8 kids (6 does and 2 buck)

Besides the loss of that doe kid and the ware and tare on Ella, it has been an amazing year.

We are so blessed!

Thank you for reading,

Miss Pickwickian

Sorry about the blurry pictures. The lighting isn't so great in our barns, but I wanted to show some of the critters.

So you can see how big they are!

Alexandra, Bristol, and Sweet Potato Pie
(Ella/Monkey)

Alexandra, Bristol, and Sweet Potato Pie

Bristol...the doe that had to come out over the other poor girl.

Aravis twins, Sicily and Paris.
9 days old (Aravis/Johann)

Paris and Sicily

Vienna

Scarlett (Sophie/Monkey)
3 days old
This was the only pic I could get except blurry ones of her bouncing off the walls. She is quit the lively little girl. What a sweetie!

Brunswick...I couldn't get a picture of him without him eating!
3 days old (Sophie/Monkey)

Brunswick
Love his markings!

Celia
Is she pregnant or not?

Texas (Parsley/Johann)
3 days old

Parsley and her ewe lamb, Texas

Two of my favorite ewe lambs from 2009
Spotty DWB 10P Hagar (One of Parsley's twins from last year). I love how long she is.
And KRK Mercy, a white July twin.

Have you ever seen anything so cute in your life?
Miss Lonely (Gwenie/Monkey)
3 days old

Bottle babies are impossible to take pictures of!
Little Dorrit, Miss Lonely, and Florence

Atlanta (Penny/Monkey)
5 days old
This is blurry, but it shows how lovely and totally dairy Penny's baby is!

Atlanta

Vienna, Sicily, and Paris
"Run!"

Vienna, Paris, and Sicily
"Wait. What's that?"