A New Birth at Cedar Hills

Claribel, our goat-mama, has given birth to a beautiful baby girl!!! Yesterday afternoon Marco rushed into the house and exclaimed: "There's a baby goat in our corral!" We rushed to the barn to find Claribel with a baby next to her! This is the second time she's given birth and we've missed both events. What a competent goat to effortlessly give birth to a baby all by herself. Amazing.

We quickly went to work preparing Claribel's suite in the barn, putting fresh hay down and assembling a heat lamp to ensure baby wouldn't get cold. We put mama and baby into the pen, gave Claribel a heaping pile of tasty hay and a bucket of molasses water. The molasses provides certain nutrients lost during birthing and the sweetness encourages Claribel to drink. But Claribel had not lost her appetite; she quickly began chowing down on the hay and slurping down the water. Baby, in the mean time, stayed close to mama. I made sure to pick baby up to determine it's sex. I also milked both Claribel teats to ensure that milk was flowing for baby. When we checked in on them later in the day baby was effortlessly enjoying an evening meal.

Marco went into the corral to check on the other animals. The entire barn community was concerned; the goats were bleating anxiously and the donkeys kept pacing impatiently. We assured them everything was okay. We discovered, unfortunately, that Claribel had given birth to two babies; however one of them didn't survive the birth. We morned the death of the other baby but gave joy for the healthy goat kid that we were blessed with. We named our baby girl Rosemary.