It happened! Mio had a baby!

Yes, just one. I think that surprised everyone. She was soo big. And even after having given birth she’s still quite big. I guess she put on a lot of body fat along with the baby in her belly.

Here is the little one:

A sweet little girl.

She was born yesterday, around noon. So my best laid plans didn’t quite work out. I bought myself a new camera and I was waiting for a memory card for it. I knew it was coming in the mail Tuesday. So I figured I’d go to the playground on Monday and check if Mio had had babies during the weekend. And then I’d stay home on Tuesday to open the door for the mailman so I could get my memory card. And then go to the playground on Wednesday. Which I did. Which is today. And of course she gave birth on Tuesday. If I’d gone on Tuesday I would have gotten to see the birth. That would have been something amazing. But on the other hand I’m not sure if I’d be able to handle that. I’d be terrified if a goat I cared about started giving birth. I wouldn’t know what to do. And I’d be so worried something would go wrong. But it seemed to have gone just fine. Alice said the little one was up and around 10 minutes after coming out. And no reason to cry over spilled milk and amniotic fluid.

Nina told me that while Mio was giving birth Preben was looking on through one of the holes in the wall. Like a proud father. The little girl came outside for the first time today and Preben was apparently standing on a bench to look over the fence at her. I picked her up and went to the fence so he could have a closer look. I thought he might be a little aggressive with her and do that defensive headbutting thing they sometimes do at other goats or bunnies or whatever. But no, he was just sniffing at her and perfectly calm. Seems to have a nice father instinct.

That’s me holding her. The first few times I picked her up Mio got a little nervous. The girl is really quiet, she hasn’t quite found her feet and barely says anything. But Mio is making lots of little nervous noises. Especially when others are around the baby. But I gave her lots of neck scratches and that calmed her down. I also brought some banana peels. I have discovered recently that Mio just loves banana peels. The other goats don’t really like them that much. But Mio gets excited when I bring some for her. So now she gets my old banana peels. Perfect garbage disposal unit. Anyway, eventually Mio calmed down nicely. She went and sat in the far corner of the room for a break while I held the baby.

She’s a sweet little thing. With those dark stripes down over both eyes. And she has a little dark patch sort of under one of her legs. Other than that white like momma.

And while I didn’t get to see her on her first day I did get to take her outside for her first trip. Mio seemed a little restless and wanted to go out.

So we let her out in the fold and took the girl out with her. The other goats were running around outside on the grounds.

That’s daddy Preben coming in to check on things.

It almost looks like she’s using mama’s beard as a wig.

So it was a very nice day. There were lots of visitors. Grownups and kids. All there to see the little new one. I got to help the kids pet her. And assure them that mama Mio wouldn’t be angry at them. One girl wanted to name the baby Fuddy. And one wanted to name her Pingo. And one suggest Misa, but I think that was a joke because that was also the name of one of her friends who was there too.

They both seemed to be doing well. Although the little girl was quiet mostly and not too frisky. She might not be drinking quite enough, but hopefully she’ll take to that soon. I remember Bandit last year wasn’t a fast jumper either. So I’m sure it’ll be fine. Mio is taking extremely good care of her baby. Complete attention all the time. Just with little breaks to guffaw down leaves when nice people bring her branches.

I really like my new camera. It’s easier to operate. And it’s a higher quality camera. I’m not sure you’ll be able to see any difference in the pictures, probably not since I’m downsizing them to the same resolution as I used before anyway. But it’s easier for me. And it has HD video capability. So expect to see some HD video of the little baby goat any day now.

A summer baby. That’s really nice. Usually I think we have them in the winter or early early spring. Next week we should be getting upwards of 30 degrees. A little late summer, should be spectacular. Fingers crossed that everyone stays happy and healthy.

I think I had some pictures left over. Let me just check my drawers.

Oh yes, here they are.

Mio’s belly. Sigrid told me she had done the math from when Preben came to the playground and if he was ‘succesful’ right away then kids could be coming at the end of this week. Certainly soon.

Terribly impolite taking pictures of her belly like that, so there are a couple proper ones of her.

I met Bodil again and got some pictures of her dog Sif. Sif has had a little operation that seems to have helped her with some breathing problems she had. Bodil had been very worried and was now very relieved that the operation had gone well.

There she is, the little sweetheart.

Bodil offered to take some pictures of me with the goats.

Kamel was supposed to come over to me, but of course with a dog closeby she wasn’t really listening to instructions.

But we did manage to get her closer.

And there’s one of just Kamel. We had more summer rain as you might can tell. Oh and I think Preben has learned from me that you can actually take cover from the rain. Because when it started raining he ran off and stood under one of the platforms. The two girls were tied down but they didn’t make any effort to follow him anyway. And Bob didn’t either. But it was almost nice seeing a goat run from the rain. That’s kinda how it’s supposed to be.

Let’s finish off with a couple of pictures of Bob.

There you go.

Oh yes, I have a video too. Bob running back and forth. It amuses me when goats do this. I’m not quite sure why they seem to get excited and run back and forth for no reason.

Running goats are sweet.

I have been taking more pictures lately. It’s almost like the good old days. I can’t do it as well as I used to, but I have fun trying. And the eyesight has gotten good enough that I can at least attempt it. And frankly I’m not doing so much with the blog lately so why not post more goat pictures? Instead of annoying people on Facebook with the same basic 3 shots all the time. That’s probably smart. It’s something to do on the blog. The thought of shutting it down has crossed my mind now and then. There was a time I wrote daily. And then bi-daily. And then a few times a week. And now it’s more like a few times a month. For the first time the idea of not having a blog actually seemed ok to me. I get my socializing and stupid writing done on Facebook. When I was going through all the hospital stuff with the eyes it was handy writing in the blog about how it was going so my parents could keep up like that, because I’m not good at talking about things. But now that things are stable that’s not really needed anymore. A blog of goat pictures is better than an empty blog, right?

And you guys don’t mind the pictures, do you? All you.. guys. Alrite then.

In fact I just ordered myself a new camera. It was kind of a spontaneous thing. After a couple of hours of research. It has megazoom and makes HD movies. It’ll be a fun toy for me. But I’ll probably write more about that later. In between posting hundreds of pictures.