new arrivals

These little guys arrived on Friday. The proud parents are Blueberry, a broken blue English Angora doe I got about the same time as the Bluth herd, and Noble. Blueberry is a great mom and I know she did all the work, but dang the whole thing was nerve racking.

I couldn't decide if she was pregnant or not. You would have thought that the fat belly would have clued me in, but she just didn't seem to act any different. I bred her in June and tried to palpitate at two weeks, but felt nothing. I guess it will just take some practice. I put the nest box in her cage on the 28th day and waited and waited for her to show some sort of sign that she intended to be all nesty, but by the 32nd day the only thing she had shown was that the nest box made a great litter box.

I dumped all the hay out of the box and was going to take it out all together but my husband felt her tummy and said I should give it another day. The next morning when I went out to feed the herd, Blueberry looked like half a rabbit. She had pulled all the hair off her belly and legs and put it in the nest box. I gave her some hay and she grabbed as much as she could carry and made a nice nest.

I checked on her right before I went to pick up the kids and when I came back (about ten minutes later) Little Scarlet came running up yelling that Blueberry had a nest full of babies.

It's so exciting! They are so tiny and weird and make a crazy little yelping noise. And they jump around, alot. They have teeny, tiny little teeth and claws. Oh, and I don't know if you can make it out in the crappy vid, but those things that look like chicken livers are placentas, which the mom usually eats, but sometimes she misses one or two (as I quickly learned) and you have to cut them loose from the babies and toss them.

They are growing (even the runt) like crazy and I'll post more pictures soon.