Thought all y'all would enjoy this being as it's kidding season and all:
On our ranch a couple of years back I was doing midwifery for a bunch o' Pygmy goats when Crazy Mama had a major freakout and started running around the stall delivering her kids (yes, goats can deliver standing up and on the run...I couldn't quite believe it myself). She threw out three honking bucklings and something that looked like a blob of afterbirth. Well, closer examination of the last expellation proved it to be an itsy-bitsy runt doeling...and Crazy Mama wanted nothing to do with her.
I took her into the house and set up a heating pad incubator and weighed her. Eek! A freckle under 12 oz at birth.... Pygmy goats under 2 lbs. birth weight are questionable at best if they'll survive. She had little toothpick legs and looked kinda like a Pez dispenser. Anyway, after a day or two of tube feeding she was able to latch a nipple on her own and thrived.... But we now had an indoor goat...and my Schipperke (Sparkie) ADORED her new pet.
I wish I had a picture of Sprite (the doeling) with her bruiser brother, but I cannot find it. They're side-by-side when she finally hit 1 lb. and he was a whopping 5+ lbs....truly a Mini Me shot. Here's a couple of shots of her with my schipperke.... And those of you that know the size of this dog (an ankle biter) will appreciate how truly small this Pygmy goat was! When I registered her, she had the smallest cannon bones the Registry had ever recorded. (She did, btw, grow up into a regular-sized goat and had kids of her own.... So never give up on the underdog!)
On our ranch a couple of years back I was doing midwifery for a bunch o' Pygmy goats when Crazy Mama had a major freakout and started running around the stall delivering her kids (yes, goats can deliver standing up and on the run...I couldn't quite believe it myself). She threw out three honking bucklings and something that looked like a blob of afterbirth. Well, closer examination of the last expellation proved it to be an itsy-bitsy runt doeling...and Crazy Mama wanted nothing to do with her.
I took her into the house and set up a heating pad incubator and weighed her. Eek! A freckle under 12 oz at birth.... Pygmy goats under 2 lbs. birth weight are questionable at best if they'll survive. She had little toothpick legs and looked kinda like a Pez dispenser. Anyway, after a day or two of tube feeding she was able to latch a nipple on her own and thrived.... But we now had an indoor goat...and my Schipperke (Sparkie) ADORED her new pet.
I wish I had a picture of Sprite (the doeling) with her bruiser brother, but I cannot find it. They're side-by-side when she finally hit 1 lb. and he was a whopping 5+ lbs....truly a Mini Me shot. Here's a couple of shots of her with my schipperke.... And those of you that know the size of this dog (an ankle biter) will appreciate how truly small this Pygmy goat was! When I registered her, she had the smallest cannon bones the Registry had ever recorded. (She did, btw, grow up into a regular-sized goat and had kids of her own.... So never give up on the underdog!)
Super Cute!! I was surprised how small pygmy babies were but this one astonishes me!
