1) The animals must eat, drink and exercise - generally before we do.
2) When you have livestock you have deadstock.
February started with a case of urinary calculi in one of our mature alpine bucks, Patriot. We were excited to acquire Patriot only one year earlier and were looking forward to seeing what he would bring to our alpine breeding program. Unfortunately it was not to be and we had to euthanize him shortly thereafter. Which brings us to another thing we always have to remember - large animals often die in winter when the ground is frozen and hard. Yep, yet another challenge I'd rather not get into.
Late February brought the start of kidding season, a little later than normal for which we ended up being thankful due to the rather cold start we had to winter this year. Paloma started things off with two healthy kids. Check!
Charlotte followed with a really stuck kid. Check! In the wee hours of Sunday eve / Monday morning. Check! On a workday. Check! With the truck unavailable and the trailer full of hay. Check! And our first goat c-section. Check! One lone dead doe kid, which would have been her first female kid in 4 years. But Charlotte lived, which was the goal- she had a rough few days but has bounced back nicely into her role as herd queen. The other reality of farming is that every choice has several variables - we chose to save Charlotte as she is one of our highest appraising and productive does, we chose to save her over her kid who quite honestly I mangled a bit trying to get her out. We chose to save Charlotte knowing that this unexpected hefty expense would impact our entire season of animal sales, profits, etc. Though we're thankful we were able. We chose to do this so she could have the potential to be bred again and finally have that healthy doe kid I've been so patiently waiting on. We'll see. This will make for a nervous sleepless 'me' come February - March of 2019.
And the nerves and fatigue set in quickly for the kidding explosion to come.
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