Triplets + Grandkids for Uma the Goat, Content Cattle, Foraging Pigs & Compost Chickens

This week, there’s long musings about my precious and beloved Uma the goat and her descendants, plus more goat kids, cattle that are fat and happy, pigs still romping around the woods and chickens spreading out hay and compost.

Uma finally had her kids and based on how huge she was, I was not surprised that she had triplets, only the fifth goat on our farm to do so!

While she doesn’t come from a dairy line, with each kidding her udder has gotten bigger and bigger, so if anyone can pull off feeding triplets without assistance, it’s her! I stand ready to jump on and supplement with a bottle though. Because she had two bucklings and one doeling, it is possible that the bucks will become more aggressive and the doeling will end up getting less, so I’ll be watching closely.

Because of Uma’s huge milk supply and because she had three BIG kids, I have been obsessing over her since the week of the snow storm. I had written in my notes that her breeding date would have made her due date February 13th, but after the snowstorm, I noticed her udder had grown so much and her ligaments in her tail/pelvis already felt pretty loose.

It was to the point that I thought I either got the date wrong or that she had been bred on her heat cycle three weeks prior and then just displayed a mini heat that confused the bucks (something that can absolutely happen, especially when other does are in heat and the bucks are in rut!).

So every day I would check on her and have Grant report her status to me in the evenings if I wasn’t back at the farm yet. Pretty soon not one, not two, but 12 other goats kidded before her!

At one point last week, I saw a bulge on her right side where goats carry their kids and thought, weird, does she have a cyst or something forming subcutaneously? I went and felt it and realized it was either a foot or a nose!! Which sent me into a bit of a spiral thinking the sack must of broken and the kids were definitely going to be born dead.

A little Googling and talking to a goat friend confirmed that even though I have never seen this before (despite around 200 goat kids being born on our farm in the last eight years), it’s normal!

Apparently, kids become more easily palpable through the abdominal wall as they get close to full term, sometimes allowing you to feel distinct features. Knowing now that there were indeed three big kids in there makes sense though, they were running out of room and yet Uma still went a little overdue and let them fully cook!

Uma is one of the most special goats in the herd for me. She was one of the last two kids from our herd queen, Lemon, who declined rapidly and died after coming down what we think was listeriosis in the winter of 2021.

Uma and her twin were already five weeks old at that time, but I persisted on getting them trained to bottles. Uma had a zest and a huge personality and was the first bottle kid we ever kept in the herd. Previously if a goat was orphaned, rejected or needed to be supplemented, I sold them to families as pets and 4H showing projects because I was worried about how they would function na behave in the herd. I couldn’t bear parting with Lemon’s last kids, though. Unfortunately, Uma’s twin died about a month after Lemon died, making Uma’s situation all the more heartbreaking.

Fast forward to May 2022 and Uma had her first kids, two beautiful does I named Blanca and Cara. Uma’s full name is Satsuma and we try to keep the citrus theme going so Blanca is for Oro Blanco grapefruits and Cara is for Cara Cara oranges. (We’ve already had or currently have a Clementine, Valencia, Mandarin, Ruby, Bergamot and Tangerine).

Last year Uma had two huge bucklings and her daughters each had does, Cara had a single and Blanca had twins.

And some of her progeny managed to upstage her on this kidding! Blanca had a single doeling on Friday night/early Saturday morning. And then because Uma looked very close to kidding on Saturday evening and we had the cold front and storms move through, I was SURE going out on Sunday morning that’d she’d finally have them.

She did, but as I was walking up, I noticed she was upstaged one more time, this time by her granddaughter, Cara’s doe from last spring, who had a beautiful mostly black doeling. So Uma became a great grandmother the same day she had triplets.

Whew, ok, that was a lot about Uma, but it’s usually only once a year that your favorite goat kids and triplets at that, too?!

Besides Uma’s triplets, plus her granddaughter and great granddaughter, there were ten other kids born last week, too! Three other yearlings each had singles and did amazing for being first timers, plus Pepperoni (my winter 2022-2023 bottle kid) had some black and white kids that look nothing like her and totally amused us and Margot, the goat my niece named after herself (she was here when she was born in April 2022), had another set of twins, too.

I’m so proud of them all and everyone is doing well. Most of the yearlings are being total helicopter moms, which is cute to see in any goat, but especially adorable in first timers. The maternal instincts run deep!

There must of been some extra tasty hay bales later in the week or the forage is greening up just enough, because the cattle were bellowing at us a lot in the woods at the beginning of the week, but then later in the week I kept coming up on them sitting, snoozing and totally content. We always like to see that!

They are continuing to bale graze, going heavy in sections of the woods the pigs already have rotating through as we work to develop silvopasture in those areas, where more dappled light hits the ground and organic matter composts to help grow grasses and forage other than woody brush.

The warm weather means that the clover, curly dock, rye grass and a few other forages are really amping up their growth and last night, Grant let the herd back into the field where Flock 2 is and they’ve been going to town.

This week we’ll likely get back to daily moves because although things have greened up, they need to be moved quickly so they don’t eat it too down too far this time of year. Plus the cold temperatures this week will slow down the growth temporarily.

The chickens are still on the upswing with their laying, but we did promise some wholesale accounts that we haven’t been able to supply for weeks and weeks that we’d have some eggs for them this week, so we may be a little limited in the shop once again. If so, we’ll try to supplement from other farms if we can!

And the hens are also so close to getting a move on again after being parked the last few weeks when the fields are wet and not much is growing and what is we need to save for the cattle.

But once we get through this week of cold and several rainy days, we will evaluate at the start of next week if we can start moving them again.

Flock 1 at least got a big expansion of their area this week as Cade finished dumping out some bulk tea that had been donated to us to compost and spread a bale of hay out of top for them to scratch through. Between that and our cream compost and extra coffee grounds, the soil in that field is really going to be rocking this year!

Oh, the pigs. The feeder group seems to still be absolutely loving the woods paddock they are in currently.

Cade and Grant are adding a waterline and a few other things in order to get them into a wooded section where we’ve never had pigs before at the end of the property.

This group is coming up on “graduation”/harvest in mid March and early April, so they’ll go out with a bang with an absolutely fantastic field to root through before they go.

The breeders are making progress in their tree line section they’re in, too, and it won’t be long before we get them back over in the field with the farrowing stalls for them to start having their piglets in early April.

Ending with some cute non newborn goat pictures. Pippa was one of the previous sets of triplets, born to Penny in February of 2022. I never had to feed her consistently, just supplemented her sister who had a major underbite and didn’t nurse well, but she has become more friendly and demanding of pets and scratches than any other goat, including Uma and Pepperoni!

And finally, Little Tiny, the goat who was initially not cleaned off or taken care of by her mom is so big now! Her brother was about twice her size at birth and although he is still bigger, she has caught up quite a bit.

And I almost never see the three of them apart. I guess putting them in a stall together for nine days really did the trick in cementing their tight bond. You love to see it!