Last night, on Halloween, during the full Blue moon, two surprise kids were born, but let me start from the beginning....
This summer, Ned and Oscar became ridiculous in their behavior, seemingly starting into a rut in the middle of the summer. This was an odd behavior, as both Lola and Lucy were nursing their kids still (Winnie was 5 months old and Sherman and Zeek were 2 months old). Since Ned was now related to most of the females in the barn (both Lucy and Winnie being his daughters), we decided it was time to sell him and let Oscar take over the herd as the primary buck.
On June 7th, exit Ned.
The next few months were unremarkable and the barn once again became peaceful and quiet. Winnie started to get a wee bit tubby, but she was also still readily nursing from Lola. We joked about her little pudgy belly as watching her nurse became more and more ridiculous. We were shocked that Lola wasn't cutting off this 10 month old "baby."
It wasn't until the end of September, that we began to wonder if Winnie was pregnant. It seemed hard to imagine that Ned happened to breed his own daughter days before he was sold, but as her udder enlarged, we became a bit more suspicious.
Yesterday we took the goats for a walk and Winnie's udder looked like Lucy's udder...it was HUGE! We were now fairly certain kids were coming any day now. Eric closed down the barn at 9pm and no signs of labor were noted. Teresa planned to wake at 4am to check in on Winnie again, but Eric awoke around midnight and was unable to fall back asleep. Around 1:00am he meandered out to the barn to find a surprise, Winnie had already delivered the kids!
Pumpkin (little girl) and "Jack"-o-lantern (little boy) are both doing well. Winnie is having a little edema of her udder, but being a champ at nursing. She even managed to sneak in a quick nursing herself off of Lola this afternoon! It was a "nursing train" of three generations.
And if anyone has any doubts...they're definitely Ned's:)
Pumpkin
Jack
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