New "Kid" on the Block

By kid, I mean baby goat....yes that's right, in case you haven't heard the buzz we have a baby goat living in our basement. How, might you ask, did that get started? Well...here goes. Thursday night temps here in good 'ole Indiana dropped well below freezing and my grandpa's goats decided to start having babies that night. Of course! Greg went into the barn to do the work and immediately heard three of them yelling out. The doe had had triplets! Meg and I were still inside getting all bundle up in our 15 layers to prevent frostbite, so he called my cell to let me know. I took out towels to attempt to get them dryed off asap to help, but that wasn't going to be enough. By the time we got to them, their wet little ears and tails were already frozen. :( Then we discovered, after the help of my brother, that the momma goat couldn't provide any milk. :( again. So??? What did we do? We loaded them up in my 4-runner and brought them home. I'm fairly certain that it's against all city ordinances to have a goat as a pet in the city and I won't even go into what kinds of problems there might be with having one living in the basement, but who cares! I couldn't just let the poor things stay in the barn to freeze and die! Greg and I took turns getting up every two hours to feed them and check on them, but, sadly, two died through the first night.

We did manage to save one of them though, a little billy goat. Meg just loves him to pieces. She keeps wanting to name him, but I know how hard it is to keep an orphan animal alive, so we're trying to hold off on that for a while yet. He's just being called "Goat" or "Billy" for now. HA! She's already started planning how to be able to actually keep him for good in our basement, but there is no way that I'm letting a stinky billy goat stay there for too long. He's finally nursing from a bottle well today and getting up and moving around on his own. We've got one more day to be home with him and then we have to decide what to do with him. Grandpa has informed us that he doesn't want a bottle baby to take care of. I can't imagine just getting rid of him, so we'll have to see. Greg has reassured us that it will work out. (I think I may be getting as attached to the thing as Meg is!) HA! Here are a couple of pics of our new kid: