Not even half way there yet!

Exhaustion is starting to set in and we're not even half way through kidding yet.  It's been a bit of a busy week with several sleepless nights as girls decided that they were going to have babies at ridiculous hours of the morning.

So, we have 69 babies so far .. about a 50/50 split at the moment between male and female, so that's all fine.

A couple of difficult births this week but nothing too traumatic.  Yet ...

So, here's a few of the latest arrivals:

You may remember that dear old Margot was the goatie midwife for last year.  Well, this year she has handed over responsibility to Thelma goat who is taking her duties very seriously.  Thelma has been with us right from the start and is 11 years old.  She loves babies and enjoys kidding season even more than the humans do!

Whenever any goat is in labour, Thelma will be there by her side with little bleats of encouragement.  As soon as any babies appear, she will help to clean them up and will show new mums what to do.  Here she is (on the left) helping young Prunella with her two new little arrivals:

And, together with Wilma, she is also a nursemaid.  Thelma does not have any milk at the moment but that doesn't stop her trying to feed other people's babies!  Wilma, however, does have milk and happily shares it with anyone who wants it!

A young goat called Dette had 3 lovely babies earlier this week.  As the kidding pens were all occupied, I set up a pen inside the main area where the other goats live.  So, she was still in with the main herd but separated by metal hurdles.  You can just see the corner of her pen in the left of this photo.  A small kiddy-sized gap in the construction meant that her little people could squeeze out and go for a run around with all their aunties.

But Dette needn't have worried as Auntie Thelma always came running over to make sure that the little person was safe.  

Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of Wilma feeding the babies but she came into the parlour completely empty on several occasions!

Over the other side of the barn, another little person was also getting a sneaky feed.  The backside you can see belongs to Katkin who has 3 kids of her own.  Feeding time is busy below her udder and so she doesn't notice that someone else, in the pen behind, is leaning through to have a sneaky feed. Funniest thing I have seen for a long time!

And finally - one of Connie's little chaps was catching some rays today when the sun came out ..