Let me recap for a second. I used to breed/raise/and show dairy goats. Carpel tunnel made milking a very painful chore as much as I loved it though, and a milking machine wasn't a real viable alternative back then. It wasn't as easy to find single small machines, most were made for big commercial dairies, so I cut back, and just let the remaining goats live out their lives with us as pets. A very, very good friend of mine who lives a few miles away started raising goats just a couple years ago but last year had the opprotunity to breed a couple of her Alpine dairy goats to a purebred Boer (meat goat). She jumped at the chance to make her offspring more useful if she weren't going to keep them and yesterday the first of the two nannies delivered two absolutely beautiful baby girls. Well the girls are not usually in much danger of seeing the inside of a freezer--and these two were definately keepers. She called me up so excited, I had to come see them. Well, I was just getting over being really sick over the weekend so I said I'd come over this morning.
I went to see them this morning, and what adorable cuties they were. Both pure white, one without a mark on her, and the other with little red smudge marks on her head and neck--just a few, but otherwise completely white. Her name is Annie. It became quickly apparent though that Annie wasn't as strong as her sister Frannie, and wasn't nursing. She was trying but never quite latching on so we wisked the baby into the house and my friend milked out mom and we tried to bottle feed the little darling. Turns out Annie is not too bright. LOL She's not getting the idea for latching on and sucking, so it was a quick switch to syringe feeding. We managed to get a few ounces in her and she got much brighter... still not quite as strong as I'd like to see her though.
Anyway, bottle (or syringe) feeding means every two hours for a week or so, and my friend oh so sweetly looked at me with big doe eyes and said, 'if anyone can nurse this baby to health it's you'. Well, yes, I have had a great deal of luck in the past, but what a way to get me hooked. Before I'd left the house with baby goat in tow it was quite plain that I was in love with little Smudge Pot Annie (her new name), and if she makes it, she is mine for keeps.
I'll get a picture this afternoon and post it for you all to see.
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