Sweet Pea, Faith and Hope

Sweet Pea March 2011

Sweet Pea was Honey Dear's first baby.  I am so lucky that HD has always been such a great mother, because Angora goats have a reputation for neglecting their babies outrageously.  Up until this year, Sweet Pea has always been a horrible mother and rejected all of her baby girls.  You have never seen such a pitiful sight as a newborn baby covered with slime and with their umbilical cord stringing along, wobbling around on their baby legs, trying to get some milk, and the mama kicks and bites at them and won't let them have any of her milk.  So her three baby girls from past years, Isabelle, Hyacinth, and Angel, have all been bottle babies that I had to raise for her.  So I called her Pea since she wasn't so sweet.

Ol' Pea had two sweet baby girls this year that I named Faith and Hope, but she was actually kind of licking them and calling to them like a good goat mother does.  She still wouldn't let them drink, so either Mom or I held her down and brought the babies up to let them get their natural food instead of bottled milk.  Pea would fight and kick, but I sat on her and held her legs and let the babies drink no matter how hard she fought.  She kicked my glasses off my face, but I still held on.  She bit my hair and tore it out, but I held her harder.  Her udder was unusually large and full of milk this year, so it must have felt better to have her babies empty it out.

Anyway, miracle of miracles, after about five days of sitting on Pea to let her babies eat, she finally started taking good care of them!  I don't know what made the difference this year, maybe she got tired of me sitting on her several times a day, maybe the four other does being good mothers made her feel competitive, maybe she mellowed out now that she is nine years old.  Whatever it was--it has been the hugest blessing that she took care of her own babies this year!