Pregnant?

I'm so behind on goat updates.  At the beginning of October (10/2), we put the breeding harness (link here for a description) on Crockett and took him over to the doe pen.  It was time for him to start making babies!!

I don't think I ever mentioned it, but we put Coral in the pen with Crockett shortly after his negative test results came back.  So she was bred on September 5th.  That means she will have a February baby just like she was!  The reason we didn't breed the others is because they were too young.  They have to be a certain age or weight before breeding.  We were going to wait until November, but we decided to put him out in October since it could take a few weeks for them to come into heat.  I don't mind March or April babies because when they start having them too late in the spring you have issues with parasites.  Earlier is better.

 Crockett was so happy to get out in the big pen with the does.  

He was more worried about eating than breeding though hehe.

 The girls kept their distance at first because they didn't know who this new guy was....

 ...but they eventually started shoving into him to get to the feed lol.

 Topaz checking Crockett out.

 Garnet was the one that was most fascinated by him.

 She kept following him around.

 She would come back to us for attention too.  

We are SO CLOSE to being able to pet her just like Topaz.

 Topaz finally sniffed noses with him.

So after a while, on October eighth I noticed this....

 Garnet was marked!!  That means she was bred.

She came into heat a lot faster than I thought she would.  I have never used a breeding harness before, but it works great.  It's really nice knowing exactly what day they got bred, so we can track much closer when they will give birth (goats have a five month gestation).  She was a lot more marked up than that by the end of the twenty four hours she was in heat.

Topaz was next.  She was marked up on 10/13 or 10/14.  I forgot to take pictures.  Unfortunately since he stays laying down so much with his arthritis he used up his crayon (the part on the harness that marks the does) before Pearl was bred.  So we have no idea when or if she was bred.  :/  At least we know on all of the others.  We separated Jade because she hasn't grown enough to be bred this fall.  She will have to wait until spring if we breed her at all (beginning to wonder if she doesn't have the dwarfism gene...).  So we will just have to wait and see with her.  We at least have a date range of a month (somewhere between October 15 and November 15) that Pearl could have been bred, if she was bred.

Well, that's all for now.  Sorry it has taken me so long to update you guys.  I'll try to do better.