My Girls are getting round!

So I'm walking around the goat yard this afternoon looking at my girls.  I have 29 does and all but 12 of them are bred (I hope).  The majority of them are beginning to get very round.  Pygmy does are especially funny that way.  It's almost like the day after they are bred they blow up like balloons and stay that way until the little ones are weaned.  I mean, they look like they all swallowed a spare tire.  And waddle!!  Short little legs, big round belly (sounds like my husband), waddle, waddle waddle.  And if you laugh, they know what you are laughing at and will give you the worst stink eye you ever saw.

The Myotonic does are not showing as much.  Some of them never show much.  Some get huge but it's a more gradual thing with the Myotonics.   More lady like and dignified, as it were...

Pygmy does are like, BLAMMM!!!  BABIES COMING!!!  LOOK OUT BEHIND!!!
Myotonics are more like, hmmm, well, there might be a small change some time in the near future....hmmm....

 I mean look, just LOOK at the belly on this doe and she's not even bred!  Just imagine, if you can, the size of the bellies on the bred does!  It boggles the mind.

Seriously though, kidding season will be upon us soon and it's time to get prepared, well, as prepared as one can be for the arrival of new life.  It is always a wonder to me.  Every spring, the same thing happens.  New babies are born to does who, for the most part, created little lives last year.  BUT, the new little life is always different from the last.  Each one is a wonder upon itself.  A new colour, a new pattern, a new attitude.

Construction will, once again, start in the barn, where we build four kidding pens in each of 3 horse stalls and 2 pens in the small stall at the back of the barn, giving us a total of 14 pens.  Well, I have actually, 17 bred does.  How the heck...ok, so it's going to happen this way.  One doe will be placed in each pen with the exception on the middle stall which will be divided into 3 kidding pens.  One doe will go into each smaller pen and 3 does, younger ones, will be put into the larger kidding pen making room for the extra doe on the first stall.  (I know, confusing).  Anyway, there are still two more does to kid, you say.  Why, yes, there is.  Oh, darn!
Well, it just so happens that I was a forward thinker, for a change.  The last two does are not due to kid until the following month.  Late April or May.  So there will be room in the barn for them.  Ha!! 

But first, I need to convince my wonderful husband that he needs to, once again, put the barn back together.  GEEZ!!  He just took it all apart back in August.  He's not a goat lover, like me. In fact, he pretty much steers clear of all the animals except his two idiot Boxers.  But every now and then, I do require his expertise in some areas, like, say, making kidding pens that won't collapse on the kids.  He's good at that sort of thing.  :)  And since it needs to be completed before the middle of March I better get busy convincing...