The Waiting Game

Sass this afternoon - soaking up some warm sunshine. It's hard to tell in this photo - but her udder is HUGE. I can't imagine how uncomfortable she must be right now.

We are anxiously waiting the arrival of Sass' kids. Her official due date is Tuesday, but we are pretty sure that she is going to deliver shortly. On Sunday morning, we discovered that her udder had ballooned out to FULL mode. She was already showing some filling going on, but this morning, it was very noticeable. She's also bleeting a lot - she's normally a very quiet goat.

The baby monitor on the kitchen windowsill. This thing ROCKS...I'm so glad we got it.

We purchased a baby monitor to install in the goat shed so that we could hear if she goes into labor in the middle of the night. This also allows my husband to monitor her from his home office, so that he can still focus on his work during the day. We had to splurge for the expensive monitor to get one that would broadcast far enough so that we could hear it in the house (up to 2000 feet!). There are a few locations in the house where it doesn't work real well, but for the most part, it's been great. I love listening to the goats chewing their cud as we fall asleep at night! The worst part is that it also picks up the chickens (and the rooster) and broadcasts it in the house where it seems impossibly loud. That is annoying.

The kid pen with our Quonset hut in the corner. This will allow them a 'safe' place to play where Buddy won't be able to get too rough with them (something we are concerned with...).

The kidding area was finished last weekend, but since Sass wasn't too interested in it, we also spent some quality time off cleaning out the goat shed too. I cleared out all the winter bedding and swept it clean last Thursday. Then I layed down some fresh clean straw that we change out every couple of days. This way, if she decides to deliver in there, it'll be reasonably clean. We got our 'kidding kit' pulled together including some homemade 'goat wipes' and I will be ordering the disbudding iron via overnight delivery on Monday morning. We debated about how to handle the kid's horns...but after much research and soul-searching, decided that quick, permanent disbudding was the most humane option. I'm not looking forward to it, but we do what we have to in order to be respondible goat owners. I'll write more on this later.

So, while the signs that Sass is displaying all point to a very near delivery date, we know that 'farm law' says otherwise. 'Farm Law' is related to 'Murphy's Law' and it basically says that she'll give birth when the weather is awful in a very inconveninet place (like the middle of a muddy field). Ugh.