Kidding and lambing has started here at the farm, both scheduled and otherwise. We have a kidding parlor, which took months of work (almost all by Duva's brother & his family), and which was actually ready within hours of the first kids being born. The other five does scheduled for this weekend waited to pop until their appointed times. It went fairly well--relatively little assistance was needed by the does, and of the 13 kids, only one didn't make it (which sucks, but it happens--their on-board systems just don't fire up, they lose body heat, which shuts down appetite, and so on. We have saved some like this, with warm baths, tube feeding, vitamin shots, and so on, and we did all that and more for this little kid, but nobody bats 100% on these cases). The score so far:
Boadicea--buck and doe
Opera--three bucks
Mocha--two does, one died
Zephyr--single buck
Karuna--single doe
Cavatina--two bucks, two does
The weather for the entire show was grand and glorious and springy. The fact that the kidding parlor worked so well and that the deliveries were mostly textbook made me feel better. This was the music running through my head--the first movement of Rachmaninov's symphony/cantata The Bells, based on a translation of Poe's poem.
Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
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