At 2:00AM this morning, we welcomed this adorable little gal to the world. What a blessing, indeed!
She definitely gets her coloring and markings from her dad and is absolutely beautiful! But, more importantly, she seems to be healthy and was up and eating within 15 minutes of birth. After our experience with Foxy and Fred, I do not take this for granted.
So far, Honey is being at least a hospitable mother. She's never been our most maternal goat, but she is allowing the little one to eat some and lying with her to keep her warm.
Little girl is black with white spots and has brown touches on her extremities -- legs, ears, face. It's a great combination! John loves the spots that Oreo has, and I love Honey's dark stripes down her face. This little one has both!
I want to brag just a bit about the above pic. You may recall from last week's post, that Honey tends to have her babies without any lead-up or fanfare. They just seem to appear. But, I snapped the above picture yesterday afternoon as evidence that she had begun labor. She wasn't panting, grinding her teeth, writhing in pain or exhibiting any of the other common tells of goat labor. But, Honey, who is always up in the mix and definitely not one to pass up hay if that's what everyone else is doing, was just kind of in a daze. And, so I continued to check on her periodically . . . right up until 2 o'clock in the morning. I love that I know my goats that well!
Crazy Honey! Always looking for kisses!
We've named her Hope Solo after the goaltender for the U.S. Women's National Team, and we plan to call her Solo. It seems fitting. She's a single and the only baby goat on the farm right now.
It's pouring down rain here, so the kids haven't really gotten to run around with her much yet. (Don't misunderstand: the human kids are doing plenty of running around in the rain. It's the goat kid that would rather not get wet. ;) They are out of school today because this rain is scheduled to turn to wintery weather as the temps drop throughout the day. So, besides keeping an eye on all the critters, we are mostly taking it easy today -- which is nice since I was up with Honey a lot of the night. ;)