First Babies Of The Year

We have our first babies of the year here on the farm.  Two adorable male Boer goat kids were born around midnight Saturday.  It was cold.  I don't know the exact temperature, but it was cold enough that it was painful to breathe the air walking from the house to the goat house.

When I went to check on the goats, the babies had not been born for long, but they were both very cold.  the ends of both of their ears were frozen solid and the larger of the two's legs were frozen stiff.  Their mother was trying to clean them, but they were freezing faster than she could lick. 

We wrapped them in towels, snuggled them, and even used a hair dryer on them.  In the end, we brought them in the house to warm  up.  We try not to separate babies from their mother's right after birth, but in this case we had to get those babies warm as fast as possible.

Here's one of them all snuggled up getting warm.  We were seriously worried about weather or not this one would recover.

This was pretty much how he stayed for a couple of hours.  Now and then we would get him to raise his head and cry a little, but he couldn't stand.  His brother was up and moving within a half hour and back with mom.  He's still having a little trouble figuring out how to nurse, but otherwise he is fine. 

Just when I had nearly given up, he finally came around and stood up on his own.  At first all he could do is walk backward and he was getting very frustrated.  But he figured it out quickly and went to be with his mom and brother.  He's taken to nursing just fine and looks like he's going to be quite the big, healthy boy.

Here are a few more pictures for you.