barn visit

I still haven't got really good photographs of the kids, I'm afraid...just hundreds of blurry ones! But I'm going to post a few anyway, because Time Goes Fast.

The above picture was taken early yesterday morning. Less than 24 hours old and both kids were already leaping straight up into the air their full height, and also scrambling up the Big Kid Rock by the barn.

In fact, the little girl toddled up to the base of Goat Mountain and cast an appraising eye when she was less than one hour old:

Enough mountaineering immediately after birth!
Back to Mama for more washing and drying.

Likewise, when he was only a few minutes old, her brother managed to wiggle half his body through a 6-inch fence opening before I could reach over and extricate him. His mama did something very similar when she was exactly the same "age" - 

I had to laugh!

If you've been following my gang o' goats for a while, you may know that every goat born here is named after something that was blooming or leafing out at the time. So...allow me to introduce:

Rocket

and 

Iris

Rocket, the boy, was the firstborn.

And that unusual white marking helped me tell the two kids apart right from the start. He also has one white foot, one white toe, and a little light spot beneath his mouth.

 Iris, the girl, is a tiny bit smaller than Rocket, and solid black except for a few white hairs right in the center of her forehead.

Interesting!

Mama is solid black and the buck is solid white.

The replacement barncams are a total bust, to my great frustration. They don't work At All in the barns and I'm missing a lot of interesting observation and fun. So I've been spending some time just visiting the big barn, which is where Vinca moved her babies the night they were born.

After chores and gardening were done today, I brought my sketching chair to the barn for my daily markmaking while enjoying the sights and sounds of the new family group.

I plucked one troubled little stalk of campion from the path to the barn and did a few pen sketches.

Vinca came over and asked if there happened to be any peanuts (there were) and then hopped up onto the bench. She hopped effortlessly - you'd never know to look at her that she was heavily pregnant two days ago.

Well, until you notice her udder. Just like her own Mama, LeShodu, Vinca has an udder that I would be pleased with on a dairy goat.

I am so happy with the way she's attentive and caring to her kids while being laid-back and unstressed about it. In this picture, for example, Vinca is having a little think and maybe a little snooze, but she's got both the kids tucked under the bench.

Vinca is the Cool Mom.

~~~~~