Meet the newest residents on the farm, and the newest mom!
Red Jasper had quite a surprise on Wednesday night...
Author: Arloa Chadwick
The night of the 14th was beautiful. Perfect temperature, and the lack of light pollution in the small town of Byers Colorado made for a perfect star watching night. The Milky Way was clearly visible. All seemed tranquil- but in the barn, things were not quite as relaxed. 9:00 PM, we went into the barn to check on Caramel, our pregnant goat, not really expecting anything but checking anyway. Well, she was having a baby! What a surprise that was, it really caught us off guard. This would have been a lovely surprise, but we soon noticed the kid was stuck. We showed up at the perfect time- if not, we could have lost the kid. She only needed a little pull thankfully, and she was out. We were just recovering from that scary episode when we realized she was having another baby! Thankfully kid #2 didn’t need any help. She had quite an easy entrance into the world, unlike the other one who we think had probably been stuck for an hour before we arrived. After the hectic few hours, things started to calm down, and we got to watch them bond, then start to stand up on their uneasy legs, then start to nurse. After a while they lay down next to Caramel. We figured we should leave them to it and let them sleep. It was a peaceful night once again. Silence. The long luxurious carpet of grass swayed in the breeze as the moon started to rise. In the barn lay a new mother and her babies- the first babies born in that barn for almost six years.
We found out that they are both doelings (which is just a fancy way to say they are both female kids) and have started calling them Pavlova and Turtle! The two have been a great addition to the farm. Sweet Caramel has been loving it. We think she really needed the company after she lost her sister, Butterscotch, a few years prior. It may be easy to assume goats don’t feel emotion like we do, but the truth is they do. When Caramel lost her sister, she cried for days. We would go out there and pet her to keep her company, but as soon as we left, she would keep crying. It was the most heartbreaking thing. Every time you went outside you could hear her. But we kept going out and keeping her company, and eventually she learned to heal. We were all sad at the loss of Butterscotch, but we healed together. She’s been loving looking after her little troublemakers now, though. We’ve been loving seeing how happy she is!
As we’ve mentioned before, it’s our hope to milk Caramel in a month or two if she has excess and use her milk in products we can sell to support the farm and model how we think that kind farming should be. Our eventual hope is to model dairy production without having to separate mothers and babies- a divine bond that so often gets disregarded in the dairy industry. Who knows, since we had two doelings, maybe one day we could milk them too, and they could continue their mom’s legacy and assist us in our quest for a kinder, more compassionate world.
Pavlova (Left) and Turtle (Right) examine the camera as Caramel (Behind Pavlova) looks on and the sheep check out the newest editions to the barn crew