The bitter side of farm life...

As every good farmer knows, there are good days and bad days. And he also knows that there's no room for laziness on the farm without consequence. You don't weed the garden, your plants get overtaken. You don't muck out the barn, you walk through slop. You don't feed the chickens, they don't lay eggs. Yesterday was one of those learning days...

We had three does that all gave birth to twins in the past 3 weeks. Each one had a boy and a girl. The little kids are incredibly adorable. We found the first two sets while the babies were still wet and getting dried off by their mothers. One set has long ears, and the other has short ears. The last set was born just this past Monday. She must've had them early in the day because her kids were all dry, fluffy and standing up. The boy was camel colored with a stripe down his back (below) and the girl was black with speckled ears (above).

I checked them out and tried to get them to start nursing. The boy didn't seem so interested, but seemed to have a full belly. The girl was trying to start nursing by herself, so they looked like they would be just fine. Ahhhh, this is where the lazy part comes in....

The next day was one of those nasty, rainy, cold days that we've been having. Other than having Caleb and Seth go out to feed the goats early in the morning, none of us left the house for the rest of the day. At about 9 that night, Paul and I commented how we really should go check on the babies, but we "needed to put our kids to bed", "really didn't want to go out in the rain", and we were just plain lazy. The following morning, Paul and Caleb went out to feed them and found the camel colored boy stuck between the wall and a feeder... dead. It's twin was so weak that it could hardly hold it's head up, much less stand. We brought it in to warm it, and called a friend that has goats. As I sat there with the dying goat in my arms, I cried and thought that this poor little goat is paying the price for my laziness in not going out the previous day to check on them. I learned how to tube feed a baby goat that morning...

After the initial feeding, it was strong enough to stand and looked promising. We continued throughout the day trying our best to get it to remember how to suck out of a bottle, but ended up tube feeding it two more times. The last time it just layed limp on my lap. Very sad. We wrapped it in a towel and put a heat lamp over it. I knew that it wouldn't make it until morning and I prayed that God would forgive my carelessness.

The next morning, life was back to normal. Paul had taken care of it early and we hardly even realized that it was missing. Life and death occur frequently on a farm, and I guess the hardening that comes with farm life is good in some ways. Nathan asked me later, "Where's the baby goat?" I tried to explain... It's gone. It died. He then said, "I don't want it to." Me either, Nathan, me either. After our brief moment of mourning together, we got on with life...