Hardy Highlights : The Year of the Goats-Part 1

Mackenzie with Casper, March 31, 2009, a day after we brought the babies home

Last year Daren started a new hobby. We bought 3 goats from our friends Bob and Stephanie Riedel. Two were purebred nigerian dwarf goats-a boy (Casper) and a girl (Calypso), and one was a cute little kinder goat, also a girl (Andromeda). Daren planned to raise them and breed them so he could have baby goats of his own and also milk the mothers. Soon after, he decided he didn't want to wait a whole year for this experience and he bought Luna, an adult nigerian dwarf that was already pregnant. Well, she had her baby last summer but it was stillborn. Daren got to do the milking thing but we really hadn't gotten to raise any babies until this year. This year, all three of our females had babies.

Calypso was the first, on February 7, 2010, and she belongs to Haylee. Calypso got pregnant a little bit earlier than we had intended. We woke up one morning to find that Casper had broken into the female's pen. We didn't know for sure what had happened, but we eventually realized that Calypso was definitely pregnant. And sure enough, she went into labor almost exactly 5 months after the day we found Casper in their pen. It was a Sunday morning. Daren thought she was in labor but wasn't a 100% sure. He said he was sure it would be within a few days. Natalee had just been diagnosed with pink eye the day before and hadn't been on her antibiotic the full 24 hours yet. I had to do Sharing Time so Daren stayed home with Natalee. I remember driving up to the house after church and I saw that the van was out on the driveway. I was sure he had made the garage into a barn so that Calypso would be in there when her baby came-which I was thinking still might be days away. I was feeling slightly perturbed when I opened the garage door. And there was Calypso alright-with a cute little black and white baby at her feet. Haylee was SO excited. She decided immediately to name the baby Breanna, after herself. I had to admit that she was a cute little thing. I wasn't disappointed at all that I had missed the entire birth. We kept Breanna for 8 or 9 weeks before we found a home for her. She now lives just around the corner and her name is Princess.