It’s the beginning of April and that means it’s baby season! This is our very first baby season, and it’s an overwhelming amount of emotions. We have baby goats and pigs right now, and it’s a whole lot of cute.
Our first babies arrived a little over 3 weeks ago, when our Nigerian Dwarf decided to go into labor when we were smack dab in the middle of converting our coop to a barn, and a new shed to coop, moving animals between the buildings, and naturally we were in the middle of a coldfront with negative temperatures. She dropped two babies outside in the cold, then we got her into the kidding stall, where she proceeded to have 2 more babies. I have a video of me seeing the babies for the first time and it’s mostly a lot of sobbing and swearing in disbelief. It was quite the moment in the middle of an already exhausting day, and I’ve been an emotional mess lately because I’m 6 1/2 months pregnant myself.
Since it was so cold I was on top of checking each baby’s temperature. I noticed our only male was not up to temp right away so I brought him in the house and warmed him by the pellet stove. 20 minutes of cuddles in front of the fire and he was perfectly fine, and he retained his temperature just fine after that. So I saved his little life, and naturally, we’re keeping him. His name is Aris and he’s a little cutie.
We tried supplementing all the babies with bottle feeding, but the babies refused the bottles, and mama, Seaweed, is doing a great job feeding all 4 babies. Seaweed is a rockstar mama.
A few days later we bought an 8 week old Nubian buckling, his name is Apollo and he’s living with our Nigerian Dwarf buck, Atticus. He’s our first Nubian, and it didn’t take long for us to realize that Nubians are loud, and it sounds like they’re screaming “maaaaaaa!” when they’re upset. For the first week Apollo would scream at us every time we were outside. Our neighbors about a mile away can hear him when he’s upset. If you’re looking for a quiet goat, Nubians are not for you. Good thing he’s cute!
Then this last week we bought our second Nubian, her name is Astrid, and she’s an adorable bottle baby that follows us literally everywhere. I can let her outside with me and she’s always a step behind us, to the point where she becomes an adorable tripping hazard. She screams as much as Apollo did, because she can’t stand being away from people. Here she is being a shadow and following us around on our deck. I’m thinking she’s going to be out of her pasture and hanging out with us a lot.
That wasn’t enough for our baby season, so we bought 3 baby Kunekune piglets this past weekend. Arnold, Helga, and Olga. Helga and Olga are from the same litter, but Arnold is from a different litter with completely different parents and he’s slightly older. So they ended up fighting a little bit, but the little ladies put Arnold in his place, plus I put some fun things in their pen for enrichment so they had more to do than fight over food. They love sleeping in an empty case of beer and playing with dog toys, who knew? Animals are weird.
These should be our last animal babies until next spring, unless we find another Nubian doeling for sale. We’ll be having a human baby in the beginning of July, I think she’ll end up being a little bit more work than the animal babies.
Written by, Brittany, the geek behind the blog. Sharing tips and stories from the trenches on navigating life homeschooling and homesteading as a stay at home mom.