Catching Our Breaths After Kidding Season!

It is such a blustery Sunday here at Capricious Ventures that only my Bluetick Coonhound, Buddy, has any interest in being outside, which means it’s time for a much-overdue update on the blog. Anything to put off heading out into the wind for a ramble.

We got Rosie through her pregnancy trials, although we ended up having to induce her into labor to save her. Needless to say, we lost the kids–they were just too far from term to make it, which was very sad. We found their little bodies outside when we went to check on Rosie that Tuesday morning–Rosie would have had a beautiful pair of twins, one buckling and one doeling, if they had lived.

Rosie’s pregnancy toxemia is probably the worst illness we have had in our time raising goats–we’ve been lucky to live in a place where the weather doesn’t normally fluctuate to such extremes, which can put stress on pregnant does and induce pregnancy toxemia. This winter was a bad one, though, with temperatures changing from mid-60s to below freezing, sometimes overnight. It was just too much for Rosie to handle, even with a warm barn and plenty of good fodder. We’re sad we lost the babies but happy our Rosie made it through ok.

After a pretty dismal start to kidding season, everything else was remarkably easy. There’s always some anxiety around the waiting portion of kidding season, but our three other does–Penny, Wanda, and Moon–all kidded without a hitch and we now have five beautiful kids running amok in the April sunshine. Three of our kids (the bucklings) are on our for sale page, in case anyone needs a beautiful, sweet boy to improve their breeding program. All of our kids are good examples of our breeding goals: color and personality!
This past couple of months also saw some pretty serious discussions about the future of our breeding program. Since Sara, CV’s driving force and unofficial (at least among the caprines) Goat Queen, is in New York for the foreseeable future wheeling and dealing as an investment banker, and I am in the process of figuring out the next step in my legal career after clerking, we will be looking carefully at CV’s realistic carrying capacity. While we are committed to breeding, raising, and selling quality animals, we also want to be realistic about our time commitments. What that means, going forwards, is anyone’s guess, but we are confident that goats and CV will continue to be part of our lives in the future!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the babies!