Sunday, February 19, 2017

One for the books (Luti continued)

Every year raising livestock I learn something new, sometimes good stuff, sometimes bad, but always something that is important for me to know if I plan to continue farming.

It's been a week and 2 days since Luti gave birth to Petal.  She's been showing signs of improvement
all week as I continued to administer antibiotics.  The past 2 or 3 days she's even gone out to graze with the herd.  This morning when I went down to the barn Keri was guarding a dead baby goat.  I quickly checked all the goats to see if any of them had kidded or were in labor.  Nope, everyone was still very pregnant and nowhere near ready.  Luti finally looked like she usually does after kidding; skinny.  She'd been carrying a dead baby around for 9 days and just today expelled it.  All the medicine we gave her last Saturday that was supposed to make her body do that made no difference.  I'm shocked this didn't kill her.  I pressed on her abdomen (which I also did last week) and felt no more kids in there.  I can't believe neither the vet nor I could feel this baby.  It was a good sized kid.
Hopefully she'll return to her normal self soon.

Today we're cooking down the small amount of maple sap James collected.  It hasn't been a good year for maple syrup because we haven't had the cold nights followed by warm days.  Too many warm nights.  Here it is February 19th and I'm too hot to get anywhere near the fire to check on the sap.


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