Goat-O-Rama Kids of 2019

[Nanno]

She's up and taking care of her kids this morning! She's still weak and a little shaky (Taffy, no miracle cures like your girl Fuzzy), but she's a whole lot better. She's doing a lot of gulping and swallowing as that fluid from her lungs comes up. Petunia is a pretty decent producer but not nearly as high-volume as other goats we've had. I'm torn whether she had too little or too much calcium in her diet. I usually feed a little alfalfa toward the end of pregnancy, but this year I didn't have any. The drought last summer meant I had to buy non-local hay and I'm not sure how good it was nutrition-wise. On the other hand, I've been feeding alfalfa pellets and I recently started giving them calcium supplements in the form of gummy candies. It's possible the calcium gummies were not well-absorbed or that they were too well-absorbed. Either way, I think I'll leave those out of their diets from now on and just try to find a little alfalfa. Something else Phil observed was that we are having a very lush spring this year, much like the spring two years ago when we had all those kidding problems. Two years ago I fed too much alfalfa and every one of our does had kidding problems related to selenium, copper, and calcium deficiency. The difference this time is that Petunia looks really good. She's in excellent weight and her coat is sleek and well-colored. I couldn't say that about our girls two years ago. So it makes me lean toward possibly feeding too much calcium. Hmm... goats are hard sometimes.