Safe Delivery

I am going to admit something I hesitated on admitting before, we were all very worried about Holly delivering her baby. Holly is our pygmy goat and she was bred to our boar/nubian cross buck, Caesar.  Not on purpose.  They have been together since 2012 and have never taken, but for that matter Caesar had also failed to impregnate any of our does.  We almost sold him along with the herd when I got fed up trying to breed goats and sold them all but for some reason decided to hold on to him,  And Holly.

When we came across an add for dairy goats who were still in milk back in the fall, I decided to give goats one more shot.  After all I still had Caesar and I knew the new goats were experienced nannies.  Being experienced mothers also makes them experienced when it comes to mating and breeding  They will often teach a young inexperienced male how to get the job done.  And that was exactly what happened.  All 3 of the new goats got pregnant.

I foolishly believed that Holly was infertile or too small for Caesar and hence the reason why she had not bred in the past.  I allowed her to innocently live with the new herd not thinking there was any risk of her getting bred.  However, Holly struggled to fit in being so small and quickly became the top submissive goat in the pen. This led to her attachment to Caesar as she used him as her guardian.  I started looking around for a companion for Holly, keeping my fingers crossed a new buck more her size would do the trick.

But not soon after we brought Thunder home that we realized Holly was already pregnant.  With Caesar's baby. I knew that combo couldn't be good.  If it were the other way around with the nanny being the boar and the buck being the pygmy it would have been fine, however a small miniature goat carrying a larger breed offspring could be very dangerous if not deadly.  So we waited being as optimistic as possible. Hopefully she would deliver twins, twins would ensure two small babies rather than one large baby.

Our wait ended yesterday when I noticed her udder had "ballooned".

By the supper hour she lost her mucus plug.  About that time, we finished evening chores so brought in some stools and waited.  We didn't have a long wait, almost immediately she lied down on her side and began pushing.

This was followed by her water breaking and then the discharge of all that yellow goo from her placenta.

 A brief peak at a tiny white hoof appeared before being suck back up into the vulva.  Everything was going smoothly and by the book.  To that point.  It was after that little hoof disappeared to retrieve it's mate for the final push out of the birth canal that our fears might have been realized.  Once both hooves are in place and ready to be delivered, the head is shortly behind it.  The head is the worse part of delivery for mom.  And for Holly, even worse. After several attempts at pushing, the baby was making no progress.  We could tell just how large the baby was by the extension of Holly's vulva where the baby's head was pressed trying to get out.

I immediately began to worry and didn't think I would know what to do but instinct kicked in and I instructed Farm Girl to jump in and begin to massage Holly's vulva hoping to relax her already tense muscles I'm certain she had and stretch the vulva open.  I want to point out that I would have gladly jumped in to aid however Farm Girl loves being hands on and getting as much experience as possible.

Her efforts worked, we could see both hooves and the nose and tongue of the baby goat.  (We are beginning to think that the tongue sticking out at us is normal in delivery.)

Once Farm Girl was able, she grasped the two tiny hooves and began pulling every time Holly pushed.

Until at last the head is delivered.

I think we all gave a huge sigh of relief.  One more push and the shoulders passed and then Farm Girl pulled out the remainder.

It was a big beautiful and healthy baby girl.

We waited over an hour for a twin to follow but Holly never went into contractions again.  It was late and we were getting very tired so went off to bed before seeing the afterbirth expelled.  Truthfully, I felt very uncomfortable doing this as she was still very large and it looked like she still had two more babies in there but since we didn't see any more contractions, we knew she was done.  Of course, I woke early at 5:30 this morning and ran out to the barn just to ensure she didn't have another or worse passed away trying to deliver another huge baby on her own, however only Holly and her baby were sitting quietly in the pen and no sight of the afterbirth.  Both mom and babe were all cleaned up and looking very relaxed. Babe is the spitting image of her mother but with daddy's ears.

We are super relieved and grateful that Holly's delivery went so smoothly.  And that she delivered during normal waking hours.  I don't even know what would have happened if she had delivered during the night with us being unaware.  We have our fingers crossed there is no after effects or damage internally for Holly and that she is able to breed again, this time however to a buck more her size.