Vet Visit and Goat Ultrasounds

With the sale of our buck Princeton to a buyer out of state, we had to call in the vet for a visit to provide him with a health certificate to cross state lines. Since we try not to call the vet in often, we decided this was a good opportunity to have her take a look at our new buck and a few girls we had some questions about.In the course of talking to the vet while setting up our appointment, I learned she did ultrasounds, which  I hadn't known before. I was excited as I'd never had any ultrasounds done on our goats before, and we have some older first fresheners I wanted to check in on.We had a total of five does that were far enough along to ultrasound. Here are the results:

  • Abby - a cranky 4 year old doe and first freshener. We got Abby this past February and she had never been bred before. She didn't settle for us for fall kidding, so I was especially concerned she hadn't taken again. The vet did indeed see one baby. One. Because Abby is my arch nemesis, I'm sure this will be a giant buckling who be as challenging as possible.
  • Leia - a 3 year old doe who came with Abby, also a first freshener. Our vet said she potentially saw four babies. If this is the case, it will be our first set of quads. Knowing this ahead of time is great because it will allow us to give mom some extra support and be prepared for any potential issues with the babies.
  • Trudie - another 3 year old doe that came with Abby and Leia, but this will be her second kidding. The vet saw two kids, which is what she had with her first freshening.
  • Lemon - I have been trying to settle this girl for quite a while now, so I was really excited when the vet confirmed that it looks like she's carrying twins. She's a first freshener who's almost 2.
  • Tali - The vet wasn't sure on Tali, which was surprising. This was the one doe I was positive was all set. She said their was a lot of fluid, but she thought she spotted a baby. Tali has triplets last year on her first freshening. Guess this one will stay a surprise.

The little blips by the arrows are baby goats. Not so cute just yetUltrasounds are not an exact science of course, and these were done early enough that everything may not have been seen. It will be fun to see how accurate it turns out to be in the end. Can't wait to see these babies and all of the others we have coming up in the spring.