Happy Monday!
Well - Eloise spent the weekend with her boyfriend. She jumped in the F150 with no problems...I actually think she enjoys car rides! The neighbor's house isn't far away and if it were warmer I'd walk her over, but in this frigid ice age there's no way I'd make it.
DH & our son also came - we all got out of the truck and I had Eloise on a leash. As soon as she got out she headed straight towards the barn. The last time she was there they "bunked" in a different area of the yard that has a very small dog-house type shed with a tiny run but since she was staying the weekend they "bunked" up in a stall to be alone. She definitely could smell and sense him because she RAN to him and dragged me right along! I should've worn my snow shoes and ice skates and pretended it was a sled race!
She was very happy to see him and my neighbor said she saw her buck on his tippy toes one time (he's nigerian, she's alpine/nubian) and saw Eloise squat for him another time. HOPEFULLY this'll do the trick!
Fudgie's udder is growing and her belly's dropping. I think she'll kid in the next 2 - 3 weeks. If the ice age melts a little by the weekend I'm going to try shaving her. I've never done it before and I highly doubt she'll be happy about it, but it'll help with the mess and milking afterwards.
My other three girls, Opi (pygmy), Cara and Nilly (Eloise's daughters) may be bred to my teeny tiny nigerian buck but there's no udder development yet - just huge bellies. They could be due as early as mid Feb but I hope they wait just a little bit longer til the frost bite warning ceases.
I have another buck, Duke, who's a nubian. He supposedly came from great milking lines, is pure bred and so on/so forth, but he really took a beating when he came to me for some reason. It's taken 2 rounds of ivomec, Red Cell, B12, masses of minerals and a copper bolus to get his coat to remotely turn black again and poor thing's winter coat is JUST STARTING to come in. I had an old fleece that my son grew out of on him at the start of winter because he wouldn't stop shivering. He's bright, alert, acting normal, pooing/peeing normal it's just his coat & the fact that it's harder than heck to get him to gain any more weight. But slowely he's getting better - I think the copper bolus really helped. He's super super sweet and would rather be with people than the goats. I really hope he turns around because I really want babies from him but if he doesn't improve there's no way I want to continue genes like that.
I went to see my friend's baby goat this weekend - she has several does due and one kidded on the 12th with a single doeling. She told me they were in the last stall in the barn so I went down there to see everyone and I said "You didn't tell me you had two babies" and she replied "I didn't - she only had one" so I said "Well, there's two in there unless I'm going crazy!" Turns out the doe's sister decided that sometime between 9:30 pm and 10:30 am was a good time to go into labor. She had a single buckling w/blue eyes and may be polled (both sisters are polled and the new doeling is too). He was all dried off, stumbling around - I picked him up and put him right in my coat. He was so freaking cute! Sigh...a few more weeks...
Everyone else is going well. Trying to huddle together as best as they can to avoid becoming single popsicles - the double ones are much better tasting anyway!
Finally there's school today. Little son is never happy about going to kindergarten and I just feel a note coming home. He gets happy about going to daycare, but as soon as I confirm that he does have kindergarten he jumps right on the "I hate kindergarten" wagon. We've started explaining that he may need to repeat kindergarten if his teacher feels it will help. He really doesn't like that idea, though. Another sigh.... I just tell him to have a good day and if he gets into a bad mood tell his teacher he needs to go to "his space" and relax. We had a phone number that looked like the school system's number on the caller ID on Friday, but no message.