Erin came over today to help Paige and I work the flock. It’s been about six weeks since we last wormed everyone and we also needed to vaccinate for CD&T and delouse the goats. Since we’re only a few days away from the nannies kidding and about a month from lambing, it was a good time to check the ladies to see how their pregnancies were progressing.

The nannies are so wide! Judging from the size of their udders, I’m betting that Hannah will kid first, followed by Mrs. Doubfire and, finally, Nanny McPhee.

When they aren’t bred, the udders on ewes and nanny goats almost disappears, becoming completely flat, and their teats shrink down as well. Although she’s laying on her side, you can see that this nanny definitely has milk coming in.

The end of each teat is plugged with a waxy substance that prevent bacteria and gunk from getting into the udder. When the kid is born, we will make sure that the plug is stripped out so that the babies can nurse.

The ewes are all showing signs of bagging up as well. They aren’t nearly as far along as the nannies, and with good reason; they shouldn’t start lambing until April 15th.

All the ewes have loads of glorious fleece! On March 19th, Emily, our A-MAZ-ING shearer, is coming on March 19th to begin the shearing process. We have way too many animals to shear in one day without rushing and risking excess nicks and cuts. We’ll shear about half the flock in March the rest at our Shearing Day Celebration on April 24th.

The bad news from today is that there is a possibility that Miss Linda might be bred. We thought we had kept her well segregated from the buck but it looks like she may have gotten caught anyway. Of course, there is a chance that she’s experiencing false pregnancy- Linda lives to have babies, and she has produced a set of twins every year of her life since she was a year old. (We think she’s around 15-years-old.) I am hoping very hard that she isn’t bred, because Linda is just too old to feed one baby, let alone two.  If she is pregnant, we will bottle feed her kids from day one but leave them in with Linda to mother. But keep your fingers crossed that she’s not, please.