We put the feed out at night and encourage the goats to eat after the evening milking. That also helps encourage births during the daytime. Well, Zeyda didn’t seem to care about that.
During kidding season, we take shifts overnight to make sure if any momma does go into labor, that we are there to assist in healthy births for both the babies and the does. My shift was ending at midnight, and Greyden was coming out to relieve me and watch until 3, but when my shift was done I knew Zeyda was very close to going so Greyden and I just watched her and waited until it was the proper time to start assisting.
Well, 12:45 rolled around and she was finally pushing!
Zeyda is what we call a “Z” baby. She is the great grandaughter of Zuzu who is the originator of the “Z” line. When our goats have kids, we keep the first letter from their mom’s name. Not only do we have to use the first letter of “Z”, but the second letter, which has to be a vowel, has to be in the order of the babies birth. For instance, Zeyda had three babies this year. ZA is firstborn. ZE is the second one out. ZI is the third one out. This helps us keep them in order and keep track of them.
Zuzu has had so many girls that we’ve been able to breed over the years that we have quickly run out of normal “Z” names for their kids and have resorted to making up silly ones. We named these three bucklings Zander, Zexy, and Zigar. Not very traditional names, but you can imagine the difficulty in starting names with a Z!
We were very pleased to have triplets from Zeyda! All the does in our Z line are great milk producers. Well done Zeyda! (There may be a future post asking for help with Z names in early February next year!!)
2015 kid count: 27 doelings, 27 bucklings
2015 doe status (33 total): 22 does kidded, 11 left to go
2 set of quads, 8 sets of triplets, 10 set of twins, 2 singles
Zamber? Zamboni; Zerulian; Zegrificent; Zimple; Ziphrelli; Zonkers; Zurch; Zurpitude? I’m having ‘way too much fun with this. I’m so Zilly.