This weekend has been exciting and exhausting. After sleeping sporadically Friday night, getting up and checking on Ivy and listening to the baby monitor, she finally delivered a baby girl at 6:04 and a baby boy at 6:22. The girl was 8 1/2 lbs and boy was 8 lbs, BIG babies. They came out fine, actually was pretty much a textbook delivery, which was nice since it was the first time for all of us.
Baby Girl all cleaned up
Baby Girl Taking First Steps
Baby Boy FINALLY deciding to get up and walk around
Brother and Sister
Now for the bad news, the other goat, Alice, is 3 weeks overdue and has been acting like she was going to deliver too, but nothing was happening. She wasn't eating or drinking, was very lethargic, and then started oozing stuff that didn't look to healthy. So we kept an eye on her, then started calling vets, the lady that breed them, and a lady that lives nearby. Our horse vet and the breeder said to call a vet an hour away that specializes in goats. When the lady that lives nearby came over she said she thought I should call too. She also helped me get a shot of penicillin into her and suggested getting an electrolyte fluid into her since she was dehydrated. My worry was that she really had been pregnant but just never delivered anything and now was going to go septic. Vet thought that could be a very good possibility but would need to see her. Here's the hitch, Andrew had taken the truck to the school cause there was a big program there that he was involved in. After catching him by phone he tracked down a friend that would drive the truck up here, help my get the cap on the truck, load the goat and drive back to get Andrew, who would be done with his program by then. Thank goodness for friends, including my neighbor that came over to help get the cap on and the goat loaded, dragging over her dog ramp when Alice refused to jump up in the bed of the truck. So we FINALLY get to the vet's at 11:45 pm. She does a manual check, but couldn't feel much as Alice was not dilated. The ultrasound showed that there had been a baby at some point which was now decomposing. After consultation with her we decided to see what would happen using a combination of drugs to encourage uterine contractions, control the pain, and fight infection. We will monitor her closely but cutting her open will be a last resort. We went with this choice to decrease risk of further infection and since her body is already trying to excrete things, then we would just help her along. We finally got home around 2:15 and were in bed about half an hour later. We're exhausted today and haven't accomplished much, but after being up for close to 22 hours yesterday I think that is expected.
