Newt - A Mother's Day Story

This is about motherhood, and Newt, one of the sweetest goats in the barn. She’s one of our best milkers, for volume and for disposition.  She’s calm, dedicated, loves a snuggle and has the softest eyes.

Newt is on the left, suggling with her sister Ginger. What a sweet pair.

For the last three years, she’s had tragedy at birthing time— two years ago she lost her single baby, a stillbirth; last year she had twins, and one died in a freak accident in the barn. This year she delivered another stillborn, a perfect baby that lost its chance before it began. I was there this time, and couldn’t bear the loss again for this dear animal that loves mothering.  She knew something was up as I tried so hard to bring that baby back. 

Newt with her typical expression of sweet contentedness

Throughout the seasons at the farm, we’ve found ways to successfully raise up the lambs and kids in the best way we know how.  We love the relationships between mothers and babies, seeing the mothers nurture, worry, teach, love their little ones and watching how the babies grow. But we’ve also mitigated some disasters. We've found that not everybody is equally good at mothering. Sometimes there’s not enough milk, or the babies are very competitive.  It’s a constant watch, and such an intense, frustrating, and marvelous challenge.

We’ve found that leaving more than two babies with a mum can lead to issues, and there’s enough going on that we might not catch the problems in time.  So when there’s triplets or quadruplets, we leave the two most matched babies with mom and tuck the extra one/ones into a blanket and raise them up ourselves.  There’s a lot of variations on this… for another day!

A Bottle Baby in the Bibs

Back to Newt: I’m there, she’s lost the baby, there’s already heartbreak.  And I have an opportunity.  We had a couple of “bathtub babies” at the house, taken from sets of earlier triplets.  Minerva was tiny, and her two much larger siblings were never going to allow her to join at mom's milk bar. Junior was a triplet from another batch, and was huge!  He was way bigger than his two sisters, so we took him to the house to give the two smaller ones a chance. 

So, these "bathtub babies" were learning about milk in a bottle and the joys of cuddles and furniture to jump on— and nights in a box in the bathtub.

Junior and Minerva

We raced to the house and scooped up those bathtub babies. The challenge was to "trick" Newt into thinking they were the babies she just delivered. I covered them with afterbirth from Newt's delivery to make them smell like her.  I draped the lost baby around Junior to slow him down, and tucked them all underneath Newt.  Crossed fingers and toes, and stepped away. And here's what happened next:

If the mama allows the babies to nurse, we know she has accepted them as her own.

She knew - I know she knew - that she didn’t have three and that two of them weren’t hers.  But the light in her eyes when she saw those babies made the world make sense. 

She loves those two mismatched babies, so much.  She’s their mother.  Minerva figured out nursing from Newt so fast, and finally stopped searching for milk.  Junior is now a little giant.  Newt might just be the most fulfilled goat in the barn.  I’m proud of her, and I’m in awe of motherhood. 

It’s all the things: love and loss and joy and sorrow and worry and laughter and pride and holding on tight and letting go.  Motherhood is everything. 

My love and awe and gratitude goes out to every mother out there on this Mothers’ Day.

Written by Amy Lum

A photo of Newt and her baby Fig from a couple years ago.

The Farmer pun is that this is a "Fig-Newt-ON"