1+2=3

I was ready for 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning. 

I was ready yesterday.

But what do I know?  Nothing. 

Minerva got the "weirds" yesterday.  Breathing like a steam engine, visible contractions, panic when I left her, strutted udder, the whole nine.  So I stayed with her almost the entire day.  It was a long one.  I worried overnight that I wouldn't hear her, even though she was right behind my head.

But nothing, so there was no problem.

This morning, if it's at all possible, Minerva was weirder.  Yawning, stretching.  Laying like a beached whale.

Then she didn't really eat her breakfast.  She looked LESS pregnant. And I said "Here it comes".

I grabbed my stuff (again), got in the pen, and watched.  Udder strutted, ligaments GONE.

Up, down, up, down she went.  That lasted 45 minutes.  Just when I was thinking that maybe I ought to come back in a little while, she layed down in a weird way and pushed.

And her vulva went out, and I said (to myself, because it was just me there) "Here it comes".

Then minutes later there was a bubble,

and I had to reposition her because her butt was up against the wall, and 2 seconds later, there were feet, and then I pulled some legs out, and then there was a head in perfect diving position, and then a yelling Minerva, and then a baby!

And 30 seconds later--I kid you not---there was another one.

I was cleaning them both off at the same time, they came so fast.

And I sucked out some mucous with the mucous sucker, and I shot them in the butts with Bo-Se, and they stood up like half an hour later and tried to nurse from my armpit.  And my elbow.  And the side of my leg.

And I used every towel I brought in there to clean them off, and then some.  But Minerva is also washing them.  She wants to take care of them, I can tell.  She's already talking to them and everything.  Luckily, however, she doesn't seem to want them to nurse.  They come back looking, and she steps away.  Either way, I'll have to tape her teats. I'm pretty sure she won't like that.

I got a nice bottle in those two lickety split.  They were hungry!  And I milked out Minerva a little bit, and discovered one side is harder to milk out than the other.  I will have to work on it.  But surprisingly, she was patient with me.  And she didn't have her face in the grain bucket, either.

Two hours later she passed the placenta, and I called it good.  So....

...presenting the FIRST EVER kids to be born here at Chicken Scratch Acres.....

Baby #1, a doeling weighing in at 6 1/2 pounds and looking like an Oreo cookie,

And

Baby #2, ANOTHER doeling weighing in at 6 pounds and looking like Minerva, but maybe with some brown.

Heaven knows what their ears will look like, though.  They're half Nubian!

Congratulations, Minerva!  What a trooper!!