Welcome Eeyore!

Eeyore is Mitzi's new TN Fainter x Nigerian Dwarf buckling.

This morning when the female goats flocked to the fence for feed, I did not see anyone trailing behind Mitzi and so assumed she had yet to kid. But when I got closer, I saw that her tail was bloody and so went in search of her litter.

Halfway up the pasture I found a little buckling standing in the sunshine. He's tan with a white belt and a couple of white stockings. At first glance, his floppy ears made me wonder if the Nubian buck Samuel had fathered the kid. Closer inspection revealed bright blue eyes and the "goat jewelry" (wattles) so often present in our Nigerian Dwarf buck BullyBob's offspring. Given the timing, we gather Bully's son Sting sired this litter.

Remembering that Mitzi had kidded twins in her last litter, I searched further. In the stall I found a red-brown doeling who hadn't made it. She would have been as pretty as her feisty dam. It's sad to lose new kids, but she apparently wasn't ready for this world. Likely she would have been as vulnerable even if she'd been delivered in a maternity stall beneath a heat lamp.

Mitzi's 2010 doeling, Josie, stands by the close-trimmed wreath.

The afternoon was filled with farm chores--tending goats, alpacas, chickens and such. As the shadows grew long, I happened by the wreath I'd set out yesterday. The goat girls have done a fine job trimming its branches.

In the evening I settled Eeyore--so named because of his floppy ears and the way he tilts his head down--and his dam into the maternity stall. Mitzi was very well behaved and allowed me to lift her over the barrier and into the stall without a struggle. Considering the fight she put up this morning when I tried to take a peek at her tail, I'm impressed that she trusted me to place her in with her new kid.