Kittens Born in March

Four of them!

Buddy

Buddy died July 20.2010, after having lived almost 17 years...some say this would be equivalent to 81 dog to people years. 

(The formula is: 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after, which is different than seven years per one year. )

Sad day.  Hate for him to leave us...

Coris

This little goat is so-o-o-o- cute.  It has white on it's nose, ears head and the tip of it's tail.  I cannot remember if George said it was a girl or boy...  but it doesn't really matter too much to me to me.... as long as it knows what it is.

It's so amazing to think that baby goats, and most animals can get up on their feet and frolic soon after birth.  They are flopped out on the ground and then, kinda like a butterfly emerging from it's cocoon, they unfold.  The next thing you know, they are walking around with their mothers.

Here is Coris, with his/her tongue sticking out....making an incredible amount of baby goat noise.

The best part about goat kids and little lambs is of course, watching them frolic and ump in the air.  Sometimes they even jump up on the parent's backs.

Now, you do have to wonder why baby goats are called "kids", instead of "lambs" or "foals" or "goatlings".  I wonder.  What DO goats and human beings have in common?

Baby Goat Born on Sunday Evening

It been a tumultuous week around our house...a lot has been going on.  We have been occupied with things WAY out of our "normal- normal" regiment of life.  You can only imagine our delight to see the birth of a little goat Sunday evening as we drove out the driveway into town.


We actually thought there was two goats born.  We didn't stop to see for sure, I mean we stopped to see obviously, but we didn't go into the gate and do the eye drops, check the gender kind of thing.

The next day, in the morning when we went to look, there was only one.  It could have been that we were mistaken... there might have been only the one.  It's possible that what we thought was a second goat was simply the placenta.  But it is also possible that a bird of prey may have carried off one.  We do not know.  We do know their are hawks and eagles here, as well as owls in the night.

We made some friends that evening, some people who were simply driving by when they too, saw the little goat giving birth.

Thinking there were two kids born we decided we would name our newborns after them...Cory and Chris.  It was nearly perfect because the names were rather unisex... could be used for either boy or boys or girl.  And the human counterparts... were female-Cory; male- Chris.  IF the goats were tow boys,,, the names would work.  If the goats were two girls it would work too. and if we have one of each, we had it pegged,  but now, with only one goat we had a bit of a dilemma.  Which name...which sex...would gat which name and which name would we pick?

After thinking about it for a moment and wondering why our animals have human names, I  came up with a name  I rather like.   It's a a combination of the two...  and it makes me think of singing praises to God for new life.... The name of our newest arrival is going to be ....

Coris.  (Chorus)

Baby Finches Growing Up

Here is the finch family with the three new babies.....  Two are gray with black beaks and one is white with a black beak. The mom is the bird with the orange beak.  A finch's beak turns orange when they mature.  The male finch has a distinct circle on their "cheeks"

I have tried to take photos of the baby Zebra finches but it's a little tricky. There are lighting issues, disturbing the parent's issues and the fact that they look so strange you really have a hard time deciding if you got a good photo or not when you are trying to distinguishing what it is you are looking at.

Here are the little flufflings soon after hatching. At this stage, they are actually called "nestlings", but I like thinking of them as flufflings because they are all fluffy. 

They are really kind of weird things at first, but it is amazing how fast they grow. Before long they actually begin to look like birds... and just a note: I think that they look and sound like tiny Emperor penguins, the ones you might see in Antarctica.

Finch eggs are usually laid one per day for several days,  and then, when the last egg is laid, they begin incubating them by sitting on them.  Interesting that until the parents start sitting on the eggs and keeping them warm the fertile eggs do nothing in particular.. or so "they say."  The eggs then start hatching about two weeks days later.


It was hard to tell how many eggs were in the nest.  I kknew we had lost one, and sometimes they cover up eggs with nesting material, so those never hatch, but it was discovered that there were three.


Two of them are gray and one is lighter gray, almost white.

 In this photo the white one is on the right.  you can barely see the eye peeking out.

Mom in the nest with the babies.

Then they become fledglings and hop out of the nest.  Here is one now....

They are cute!


Noisy... and demanding of their parents, which depend  a lot on me to keep up the food supply for these hungry babies.  I give them bird seed, millet, apple, lettuce, clover and alafa sprouts and sometimes I hard boil an eggs and give them some of that.  

Bruce