Diggle gives us a fright

So there I was, yesterday morning, watching the youngsters tucking into their breakfast. All of sudden, a small brown goat fell on her side and started twitching and kicking her legs. I rushed over to find little Diggle goat looking like she was having some kind of fit – her eyes rolled back and legs twitching . In true goat fashion, none of the others cared at all and were trampling over her to get to their next mouthful, quite oblivious to her distress.

I pulled her out from under the greedy hordes and managed to get her lying on her stomach. A vigorous rub and a cuddle and she was right as rain! Back off to the trough to finish her breakfast.

I can only assume that she got her head trapped against the feed trough by one of the larger girls and had her oxygen cut off for a moment. Certainly, she was up and about quickly and looking like nothing had ever happened. Poor little Diggle goat!

BBC chaps turned up yesterday afternoon and spent some time with us looking at the goats and asking lots of questions. They seem quite keen to come and do some filming, possibly next week, but we will hear for definite within the next couple of days. We sent them away with some milk and cheese to sample. They were very taken with the goats – particularly that they are so inquisitive and affectionate. It also tickled them that Footsie comes over to have her ears scratched and Bunnie shouts at you when you call her name. Far too intelligent ...

And to end the day, we had another visit from Michael the scanning man who checked out all the remaining pregnant ladies. So, most of them are in kid but, as we suspected, there are a couple who didn’t manage to get pregnant. Little Big Ears Johari, our sole Anglo-Nubian, is due to have triplets in April. Not sure that we have the space to cope with all those extra ears!

So, finally we have a complete kidding calendar and we know for definite who will carry on milking through this year and who is dry (and gets a year off!). I have sprayed a red dot on the bottom of those who are milking through to make it easier when we split the goats at milking time. It was quite easy until last week as they were really the only ones with udders! However, as some are getting near to kidding now, their udders are getting bigger and it only adds to the confusion. Mind you, it doesn’t take much to confuse us early in the morning!

Kidding starts 28 Feb and goes through to 22 May – all dates subject to change of course! Our busiest time is mid-March and then everything gets a little more leisurely towards the end of April and into May. Approx 141 kids due in total but there will no doubt be a few traumas and surprises!