Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

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Apricot Thyme began to show signs of going into labour around 9.45pm. In previous years she has been a quiet, let's-not-make-a-fuss type of mum but within 10 to 15 minutes we began to feel that this was not going to be a quiet, fuss-free birth. Thyme was pushing and pushing but not a lot seemed to be happening. We could see a water bag (the fluid that surrounds the kid inside the womb) but there were no signs of any feet or a nose and indeed, Thyme was not really opening up enough for us to see much at all. For a while Thyme stopped trying and then she began again but still nothing appeared. After an hour we phoned the vet. David (who is usually the one to put his hand inside the females when we have birthing problems) was very reluctant to do so with Thyme as her opening was so small he was afraid he might hurt her. The vet (Lindsay) agreed to come out (for the second time, she had been here earlier trying to help Onion) and with her small hands, we hoped she could have a feel and see what going on.

Fig Within a few seconds, Lindsay was able to work out that the first kid was not in the right position at all as she could feel THREE legs, not two. The correct way for a kid to be born is front feet and head first and the rest of the body then following. Lindsay was able to get the kid in the right position and then slowly pull her out. The second was completely backwards but as this one was going to be pulled out too, it was okay to pull it out backwards, rather than spend more time inside Thyme trying to turn it around. Thyme had screamed a fair bit throughout all this: giving birth is painful enough without a human hand being part of the process too but as soon as we put the kids in front of her she began licking them dry and gently 'talking' to them. Fig, despite being incredibly skinny and small, bleated constantly and within half an hour was greedily drinking from mum's teat! Apricot was much slower in getting going and we had to manually give her some milk before eventually, around 2am, we got her suckling on her own. At that point we felt confident enough to go to bed... Phew!!