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Wednesday, 19th November 2014
Our pygmy females are now around third of the way through their pregnancies. Their gestation period is 145 - 152 days and today is day 53 for Thyme (shown here virtually asleep with her ever gorgeous daughter Nutmeg) and days 52 and 51 for the rest. We don't know for 'definite' that they are all pregnant BUT we are very optimistic for a variety of reasons, the first being that when they were last in season, we know that Marmite mated with them and as far as we know he should have been fertile. Secondly, as far as we have been able to see, NONE of them have had a season since (they only have seasons when they are ready to be mated with, once pregnant, they no longer have them). We are also starting to see a bit of weight gain in most of them although at this stage the unborn kid inside them will be very small. Most of the growth in fact takes place in the last six weeks.
You can, as explained on 22nd October, scan livestock in the same way as women are scanned in order to detect signs of young growing inside them. With our small numbers, it is quite an expensive option and if we did find out one or more weren't pregnant, we wouldn't do anything anyway, preferring instead to wait till the spring and then make decisions.
Our care for all our pregnant girls continues as normal at this stage, they don't need any more food than usual and instead eat their twice daily rations plus hay whenever they want it. Mealtimes are however a time we need to be a little more watchful. Goats have their pecking order as you know and do push and shove a bit when it comes to feeding. Ours have always fed together with enough troughs to ensure no more than two of them need feed from the same one. Obviously pushing and shoving when pregnant is not ideal and the one who shoves and pushes the most is in fact Pepper, our wether. For this reason we now feed him on his own so that none of the girls get hassled by him and also to make sure they get their fair share.
He does not seem to mind in the least!!
