I don’t know why everything happens on Shabbos…but it does.

All these situations that I want to look up information online, call someone, drive somewhere to buy something…everything happens when I can’t do that.

Our rabbit was killed on Shabbos morning. Our goose was stolen Shabbos morning. We woke up Shabbos morning to see dead chicks piled in our yard. And on and on…

About ten days ago, on Friday afternoon an hour before Shabbos, our third mother goat gave birth – to live triplets! Two bucklings and a doeling who all look totally different from one another (unlike the identical twin doelings whose only visible difference is one’s left ear is less upright than the other). The names of the bucklings are Pecan and Marco Polo (ds7 named this one); their sister is Nutmeg. They join the twins, Dakota and Dixie, and the singleton, Chloe, bringing our total kid population to four females, two males.

Of course I missed the birth – on Fridays I don’t have my usual schedule of looking in on them, feeding them, holding the baby goats, and checking to see if any pregnant does are showing signs of labor. I have some low grade anxiety until all the births are finished, all placentas are expelled, all kids are nursing – waiting to know that everything is okay and we’ve gotten through that period with everyone alive and well. It was a relief to be past it all and know that all the mothers and babies were healthy and thriving.

It was a week later on Friday evening after everything quieted down that I went to take a look at the goats. Thursday evening all the kids looked wonderful. Now, I noticed Dixie was looking wobbly on her feet. That was surprising. I looked at Pecan. He was looking wobbly as well. The light was fading and I looked closely at the others. In total, four kids that were jumping around energetically the day before looked a bit unsteady. Only two of them were nursing from their mothers. I felt a sudden pit in my stomach, quickly went into the house and asked my teens to come outside with me and take a look.

“Do you notice anything?”

They all noticed what I did – four of the six kids were walking hesitantly. But why, and how could they go from being so healthy to looking so peaked within a day?

When I went out the next morning to look at them they looked much worse. Obviously they hadn’t been nursing all night long. Two were still doing great but the others were too weak to stand and therefore too weak to nurse. One was lying on her side, showing almost no signs of life. When I picked her up, it was as if she had no bones or muscle tone – it was like picking up an empty sack.

I felt helpless. I didn’t know what was wrong but I knew they would starve to death if they didn’t eat something. Since it was Shabbos, I couldn’t milk the mother goats to give the babies milk, I didn’t know what else I could give them, I didn’t have any bottles/droppers/syringe to feed them with, and I didn’t have a way to buy any or call around to find people who had the knowledge or supplies to help.

My boys held down the mothers before they went to shul and held the babies on to them to nurse, but some of them were too weak to suck. It was somewhat successful but they needed to eat regularly and there was no one to help me since I couldn’t help them myself.

Fortunately, as I was worrying about what to do my daughter arrived for a visit and when I told her my dilemma, she suggested I give them sugar water with a straw, holding the top of the straw to create suction and them dropping it into their mouths. I was so grateful for her suggestion, and it made a lot of sense to me.

I mixed maple syrup with water and added some vitamin C powder, and holding each kid on my lap laboriously dripped in a few drops at a time while holding their jaws open. (I gave them vitamin C in case the weakness had been caused by a virus of some sort.) I stayed with it until all of the kids looked like they had a little bit more energy, and when I finished I was exhausted but hopeful they might make it.

First thing Sunday morning one of the boys milked all of the goats while my husband headed to the store for bottles. I fed each of the four, feeding them in order of which was weakest, and then we fed them again later in the day. I was encouraged to see them looking stronger; on Monday I gave them bottles in the morning and only one needed a bottle in the evening – all the rest were nursing from their mothers again.

When I went to see them early in the morning on Tuesday, it was so wonderful to see them all standing steadily and even jumping! Now that we’re successfully past the hard part, it’s empowering to have successfully navigated what looked like a very dire situation.

For the last three days I kept all of our children away from the kids, not wanting any extra handling to stress them in any way. We all love interacting with the goats so it’s nice that as of this afternoon I could let the kids play with them again.

Avivah