No more kidding around

The kidding season is finally over.

As if kids were tax returns, Planet Nine waited until just before midnight on April 15 to go into labor.

A first freshener, she wasn’t completely dilated

so Barb had to do some serious midwifing, working to enlarge the escape hatch and then gently but firmly lead the two kids to daylight.

Nine was so wiped out by the ordeal that for a long while she couldn’t lift her head off the ground to care for the boys.

But she gradually recovered and began cleaning them off and bonding with them.

Soon they were up and about exploring their pen.

Bienvenido, Niñeos:  Asgard and Mongo.

They’ve been a handful from the start because they’re both 

squeezing through the smallest openings in their pen

and wandering away from their frantic mom.

Despite the difficult delivery, Nine and the Niñeos are flourishing.

The family enjoys its supervised outdoors adventures, when the kids can scamper about freely

with frequent stops for refueling.

Asgard doesn't hesitate to push back against his larger cousins.

It’s been a colder than usual April, but MeadowWild is greening up nicely.

After a long winter of hay

the goats love browsing on fresh salad

as do the deer that waltz through the yard at all hours of the day and night. 

Soon we’ll be seeing fawns.

The Cheeklets

and Kuiper Kidz are growing “like corn in the night” (as Thoreau puts it).  While they may appear placid at nap time,

they spend a lot of time and energy chewing on stuff

and playing.

Charon takes a break to nuzzle mom.

Migrating avians continue to visit the pond.

The devastation to the front yard

engineered last fall by Pepé Le Pew and family

has been repaired – the burrows filled in and re-seeded,

with a friendly request:

A strange cat has been visiting Momma Kitty’s Meow Mix dish at night –

and is not always welcome.

We “enjoyed” several snowy mornings in late April.

 Dustin looks out on the white landscape;

“I’m so sick of winter I could scream!”

Two weeks after birth, the Niñeos (and Nine) join the rest of the herd.  The moms browse in the south meadow while the kids go wild:

We popped open the traditional bottle of cheap bubbly to celebrate the end of a bittersweet kidding season.

We’re grateful that Kuiper, Nine and the kids are flourishing but all three deliveries were difficult

and we’re still mourning the loss of Cheeky.

Next year we may skip the harrowing natural childbirths and simply

order babies from Amazon 

 or get them from a Vend-a-Goat machine.