Goat pregnancy pooch test
It seems like sacrilege
to have such a cute, adorable goat and to waste a whole post looking at
her hind end. So here's a starter photo of Artemesia cleaning up a
fenceline for me. And now, on to the butts....
During Abigail's pregnancy last year, I tried a lot of home tests to figure out if she was pregnant. The only one that seemed at all diagnostic was peering at her vulva at intervals.
The bottom photo in this series shows the marked change that occurred
in Abigail's butt geography as she moved from her second to her fourth
month of pregnancy. Notice how the wrinkles fled as the vulva widened in
preparation for pushing a kid out a very small hole.
Looks diagnostic, right?
Now peer at the first pair of photos to the right. Those pictures were
taken in 2015 when I thought Artemesia might have been pregnant with
Abigail's grandchild. The obvious change, though, turned out to be due
to some combination of Artemesia maturing into her full sexuality (her
first birthday was in June) and perhaps changes to her vulva as she went
into heat. She wasn't pregnant after all.
Okay, now look at the
middle photos. These are the ones I'm currently scratching my head over.
We hope Artemesia is 2.5 months into her first pregnancy, assuming her post-Thanksgiving driveway date
stuck. As a certified nervous nellie, I change my mind about whether
Monte did the job every time our mini-Nubian (a cheerful, chatty girl)
calls a hello to me from her pasture or wags her tail in greeting when I
bring her breakfast. I haven't seen any mucous on her vulva since
D-day, but wagging and talking can both be signs of heat...which would
mean our first freshener hadn't freshened after all. And since we put
all of our eggs (milk bottles?) in one basket this year, that would mean
no homegrown dairy products in 2016.
Unfortunately, based on
this series of butt shots, I have to conclude that I can't actually
conclude anything for another month. A trip to the vet to utilize his
ultrasound looks better and better, but I'll probably keep biting my
fingernails and tough it out. After all, if we really wanted a summer
kidding, the difference between a July and an August birth wouldn't be
that great. Maybe I shouldn't have named Artemesia's hypothetical unborn
daughter Aurora after all?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I am doing the same thing with our new little doe, who was supposedly bred in late November. She hasnt shown any signs of heat, but she also didnt complain when our overly ambitious wether tried to mount her when we first brought her home.
When is artemesia's due date?