Jude's surprise birth (Warning contains graphic labour scenes) - Episode 23
Good afternoon patrons
Join us this week for a very emotional day on the Ramshackle Ranch. As the name suggests, it is pretty graphic video capturing Jude’s full labour on film.
Completely unaware that she was pregnant, we were grateful the birth went fairly smoothly despite the loud wailing. Jude is pretty vocal at the best of times but those labour contractions certainly raised her voice a few decibels. We hope you don’t find it too disturbing. I did quieten some of the sound in the editing suite just to take the edge off.
After the birth of Hugo, we had reason to suspect that Dot might be pregnant too so I did a bit more reading on assisting with kidding along with my milking research. This meant we were better prepared to assist Dot with her labour and the process happened even quicker the second time round.
At the moment both kids are doing great although Mabel is definitely a lot shyer and more cautious than her cousin, Hugo. At 6 weeks old, Hugo is now a massive buckling. He has a healthy appetite tucking into all the food that his mum eats, as well as, drinking plenty of her milk! It looks like he will be polled (without horns) just like his mum, Jude.
He’d already started trying to hump little 3 week old Mabel so, among other reasons, we decided to castrate him earlier this week by elastration; which is the process of cutting the circulation to his testicles using a small thick latex band. Whilst he was pretty upset and uncomfortable for the first hour, after that he seemed to be in no pain whatsoever which is such a relief to us both. Thankfully, he has not lost his trust in us and still comes for cuddles and pats every day.
As always, our best wishes to you and your loved ones. We hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Troy and Pascale
Comments (10)
Goat "Midwife" sure thing Pascale, you can add that to your list of varied conversational starters. A dinner party favorite...well maybe afterwards along with that snifter of Cognac. I say all this tongue-in-cheek as I had just returned home tonight with a sizeable hamburger preferring to sit at the couch and hit play to this video. Your editing skills passed the test, I enjoyed my meal and have successfully ticked off goat birthing___a real first! ✍️)))
Success! Now where's that celebratory cognac you were talking about!
So wonderful to see Jude giving birth to Hugo, and what a great young mom she was! And beautiful to see Pascale helping out with emotional support and a bit of clean up work and Jet checking in on what all the fuss was about. Thanks for sharing this special event with us! And that's a great looking feeder that Troy welded up! Timely addition given the growing goat family at the ranch ;) I really need to get a little welder to play around with....
Both the goats are great mothers which is such a relief. I am incredibly grateful to have Troy around to weld up custom goat paraphernalia for our ever increasing goat herd.
Always something new at the Ramshackle Ranch! Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome. The challenge is learning and adapting each week with every new change but one of the rewards is that there is always something exciting to share with you in our weekly episodes.
:)
That’s an incredible bit of vid that you captured there. What a wonderful year you both are having, seeing all the seasons and all the phases of life on a farm. Savour it.
First goat cheese made this week. Savoured every mouthful!
Awesome episode👍