Eggs (week ending 4/9): 44
Eggs (year to date): 616

Before yesterday afternoon, the highlight since my last post was taking the Cornish Rock meat birds and two of the larger Easter Eggers out of the nursery on Saturday and putting them in with the general population. They were all panicky at first, trying to huddle their way back into the nursery by where the heat lamp hangs - but they slowly got used to the idea of having more space - and a bigger feeder and waterer handy. One of the EE's got out of the coop but seemed too stupid to get back in and had to be helped. A couple of the Rocks got out and struggled to get up the step into the coop, but they made it. There was a bit of mild pecking going on, but for the most part everything worked out.

This would have been it except for what happened when I went to gather eggs yesterday. I have a couple of renegade hens who have been laying in a part of the barn near the goat manger, in an old food tub that has a little hay in the bottom of it. I walked into that part of the barn to check for eggs and thought I saw a cat in the goat stall with Clover.

I looked again. It wasn't a cat. It was a kid.

So I ran to the stall and there was Clover, standing there with what my wife and I later identified as twin does. They were both dry and fluffy, but the remains of their umbilical cords were still damp, and Clover's tail was still wet, so it hadn't been that long since they were born.

We weren't expecting this for at least two more weeks, maybe even a month. Now we're thinking that Clover was pregnant the first time we brought her back from the breeders.

Naturally my daughter was thrilled. Their bodies are colored more like their mother, while they have their father's facial colors. They're a nice mix between the Swiss and American Alpine.

Once I got over the shock, I was thrilled.

So I put up some chicken wire in the new stall where I saw that it was needed, put the two new kids inside, and Clover had no problem going in to care for her babies. Then we checked the goat book and found out that we had done everything wrong when it came to the birth of these kids. But as my daughter put it, goats have been doing this sort of thing for thousands of years, so it all came naturally.

The other goats didn't seem to be upset by the new arrivals. I still moved the family to keep the little ones from being trampled during the morning food rush, though.

Up next: perhaps dividing the new stall into sub-stalls for the other goats;getting the farm registered with the American Dairy Goat Association, naming the new goatlets; and, as my daughter said, "Making a huge order from Hoegger Goat Supply" (for milking supplies).

And, of course, naming the little critters.

One goat down. One or two more to go.