Cyclops Baby Born Yesterday!

Cyclops Goat

Our huge pregnant goat Blossom had her kids yesterday and delivered Quads all by herself!

Three of them were born big and healthy, 2 boys and a girl.

However the forth little goat was born with a rare condition called Cyclopia, a disorder in which the embryotic head doesn't divide properly to form two eyes, and instead the baby has just one eye and usually no nose.

That is exactly what happened, but our little goat also didn't have ANY HAIR except a few strands on the tip of his tail.  He may not have developed like his siblings and been born a bit premature before the hair formed, or maybe he was just a natural Sphinx??  Sadly, he did not live. 


The STORY:

  I was busy getting dinner ready for some guests when our goat Daisy started making distressed beatings.  I knew something had to be up in the goat yard, and guessed Blossom must be delivering kids and Daisy just had to let us know about it.  I told my children that our last goat might be delivering babies and they raced out back to go see.

  However, before I could get my shoes on, my oldest daughter comes running back in in near hysterics and tears.  "Mom!   Mom!  She had them too soon, and they look like Aliens!"   My oldest was very distraught.  I suddenly imagined Blossom with eight tiny babies that would not survive, and for some reason my daughter thought they looked deformed.  I tried to calm her down saying that sometimes this happens (not really knowing what had happened) as I hurried out.

  The first little goat I came to was the little Cyclops.  He was deceased but not so cold.  His deformity caught me off guard and I had to agree with my daughter, he looked like an Alien! 

However his appearance didn't gross me out, but instead intrigued me.  I wondered if he had been born alive or not and was suddenly very sad he had died. 

I mean, how awesome would it have been to have a living Sphinx Cyclops goat in my barn yard! No hair, and that huge head!  I had to pick him up before I located the little, single eye in the middle.  His skin was slick and delicate, his body soft and small.  I knew immediately I was looking at a rare Cyclops goat.

I quickly looked around for the others, wondering if I had a whole litter of Cyclops, but was relieved (yet strangely a little disappointed) to find three normal healthy kids in the barn, still wet, up and walking around, calling to their momma.  I was mainly relieved they were alive and was impressed by their size.  They were all bigger then Ebony's tiny baby, Alaska Star, and even the Cyclops looked big enough to be full term. 

Blossom is a good mother, nursing all three of her living kids, and I think they will all be just fine!

This picture is fuzzy, but it is of Blossom's 3 living kids, still wet from their birth.

More pictures of our Cyclops baby.  No nose formed and he has just one small little eye above his mouth.

Baby Alaska is being bottle fed.

Alaska Star is having a hard time eating from his mother.  Ebony must sense that he is not as healthy as her other kids because if she realizes he is trying to nurse she will kick him away. 

This is frustrating to us but I realize animals do it to benefit the kids that have the best chances, which are his two other siblings.  Alaska is so small, easily the smallest goat born on the farm this year, so it is funny how we called him Alaska- the largest state.   

Luckily our farm is not a nature movie where you have to watch helplessly as the poor reject starves.  Alaska is getting star treatment on the bottle, filled with Ebony's fresh milk.   Ebony produces a good amount of milk and will stand still most the time while we milk her, so this arrangement is working fine.   Hopefully when Alaska is stronger and more able to stand his ground we can nudge him back on his mamma. 

Ebony had Triplets!

Yesterday we arrived home to find Ebony in the barn with triplets!  Two boys and one girl.  The smallest boy only weighed 1 pound 8 ounces!  He was unattended to in the corner, still sloppy from his birth, but not cold because it was nearly 90 degrees outside.  The other two kids were up and nursing.  I cleaned off the smallest, which my girls are calling "Alaska Star,"  and held him up to his mom.  She licked him and he started to nurse.  His legs are still weak, and I'm guessing it may take him a day or two to find them but we can help him out until then. 
  Here comes another night of going out ever 3 hours to help feed a baby!



Here the little girl is nursing, and Alaska Star is laying in the hay.

 

 

The biggest triplet is a boy we are calling "Ace" and he is black with frosted ears and a muzzle, a white mullet and "glitter" down his back.  The other triplet is a little black girl we might call "Avonlea" that looks identical to Alaska Star.

I set Alaska Star next to our cat Tippy when I brought him up to the house.  Tippy is a small cat, so you can see how little the triplet brother is.  Tippy is very patient, but she wasn't really in the mood to adopt a kid.  She sniffed him and went her way.  This morning I was happy when Alaska Star was standing on his own and ready for his Mom full time.  I will continue to check on him every 3 hours and make sure he is feeding.

 

 

 

We now only have one pregnant doe left!  How many babies do you think Blossom will give us??

 

Honey Update

Our little goat Honey has pulled through and is now a playful, wonderful kid in the yard.  Daisy stepped up and is a great Mother.  I love watching them together...but of course Turkeys always get in the way.

Goslings turning into Geese

Wow- Our sweet, little goslings grew so fast! 

  

 

 

My oldest likes to sing to the geese, and they like to reply back.

 

 

Wild Blackberries!

We have a wall of Blackberries in our trees.  It is tricky trying to pick them without getting thorns in our skin but it is worth it in the end. 

So far we have enjoyed blackberries on cereal, in yogurt, in smoothies and we even made a blackberry cobbler with some friends!

   





The bushes go over a deep crevice/irrigation ditch, so we use the ladder to get to the hard-to-reach berries. It is not without its risks.  It drops off about 3 feet and that is really deep when considering you will fall into a tangle of thorns! 

Overgrown Gardening!

We are enjoying the grass and weeds this year in all the gardens.  If birds would stop hatching, and goats stop producing incredibly cute kids that need played with, I would have time to weed and trim back my jungle. 

But sometimes we just need to go with it, and let the wildflowers take over....

        



What kind of IVY is it?

Wildflowers with Ivy all over them.

She is wondering how to have a corn maze when just 3 stalks of corn grew.