Kidding 2026

A challenging year

As our anticipated kidding in April approached the nannies were getting huge! In the end Sorrel was the first to burst and we found her after she'd already delivered the first around midnight. Sadly it was dead. The next two followed in very quick succession and although they looked completely normal, something wasn't right. Neither had much spark and aside from flopping their heads around, they didn't seem to make any attempts to get up.

Sorrel perhaps also knew this as she seemed more interested in looking for the first-born than she did encouraging the other two.

As an hour passed the kids were getting hypothermic and we had to remove them back to the farmhouse and try to get them warmed up. After a couple of hours under the fan heater they were warm enough for us to tube feed some colostrum we had milked out of Sorrel.

As the following morning arrived we took them up to our vet for review. Steroids, antibiotics (in case of E. coli), vitamin E and selenium, and intraperitoneal glucose on board we returned home knowing we had done what we could. Sadly the billy kid died an hour or so later, followed by his sister in the early hours of the next morning.

Unfortunately the drama wasn't yet done. The following night, Baroness was in labour. Her first kid had an almost identical presentation and again we were back trying to warm the kid up and get it going. We asked for a vet visit and by 11pm it had had assessment, treatments, and been tube fed a belly full of colostrum we'd somehow managed to convince Baroness to give up in the dark. The next morning we were due a further vet visit to read our cattle TB tests and do some herd health planning. We took the opportunity to review the kid again and had to make the awful decision to euthanise him as there was no prospect of any improvement and he was on the same inevitable declining trajectory as Sorrel's kids had been.

With a pattern emerging, and noting that Baroness had also passed an aborted foetus after the kid, the vet took some bloods to check trace element levels and for toxoplasmosis.

Pepper's turn

Whilst we waited for results, Pepper decided she was ready and bore a healthy-seeming billy kid. She too then followed this with two aborted foetuses. The first few days were an anxious time - would this kid survive or would something awful happen to him as well? So far he is doing fine and growing like a weed on Pepper's huge udder full of milk - enough to feed three!

The blood results on the nannies ruled out toxoplasma but did find that they were very low in copper and low in cobalt. Despite this none of the herd had been showing any of the typical signs of copper deficiency and their feed contained pretty much the same levels of copper supplementation as the one we have used in previous years (that was discontinued). Our haylage came from the same local farm too, so it was hard to work out why this had happened.

At least we have a likely cause of the problems and can do something about it - the whole herd has had copper and B12 injections to boost their levels and we are planning for ongoing copper supplementation.

Keeping the theme

We have stuck with the theme of herbs and spices and similar things for naming. Given his varied colouration this year's kid has been called Patchouli - or Patch.