Snooze the Rooster, will ya?

Had a false-alarm with Nettie.  Put her in the kidding pen last night & around 10 o’clock I swear it sounded like she was grunting from labor pains.  Of course, Rhiannon and I were just finishing up with our bath so I yanked her from her bubble bath, dried her & put her in her PJ’s, gave her to Paul, then pulled on my barn clothes & ran outside to the barn.  I sat with Nettie for over a half hour and not one grunt, groan, arch of the back or apparent contraction happened.  So back into the house I went, got out of my barn clothes and went back to getting Rhiannon ready for bed.

Of course, the rest of the night I only half-slept because I was listening to the goat monitor for any more signs of impending labor.  There was a lot of pawing and heavy breathing, but no grunting from contractions.  It seems the moment I did fall soundly asleep, the rooster started crowing.  You can only imagine how loud a rooster crow can sound over a baby monitor if it can pick up something as soft as a goat breathing.  It was quarter to five.  (Actually it was quarter to six….stupid time change.)  I tried to ignore it the first ten or fifteen times, but eventually had to hit “Snooze” on my rooster-alarm-clock….I turned the monitor off.  Figured Nettie wasn’t making any noise & I’d be up in a short while anyhow to feed everyone & let the chickens out.

Nettie didn’t look any closer to kidding than she did last night.  She wasn’t dilated, wasn’t grunting, and her bag still isn’t anything close to what it looked like last year just before she kidded.  Her belly isn’t as large as last year either.  Maybe it was because she had twins the past two years….and maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll only have one kid this year. 

I let her out of the pen for breakfast (which she didn’t finish) and to roam around the goat yard for a while.  She’s definitely a bit cranky this morning and the fact that she didn’t eat all her grain makes me think that we’re getting close.  I gave her a few hours out of the kidding pen but when I found her underneath the barn again I called her up & put her back in the pen.  So the wait continues.