… and q is for quadruplets. Last tuesday evening our brown goat kidded for the first time in the 4 or 5 years of her life. She gave birth to 4 kids, two strong ones, black with white markings (boy/girl) and two very small white ones, one who did not survive the long labour, girl, and a little weak little thing, girl, that we decided to bottlefeed from birth as we thought she was too small to survive unaided. That first night she was not really able to suck, and we worried that the milk (colostrum replacement for lambs) would end up in her lungs, so we kept her very warm near where we slept and she woke us up around 4 crying for milk and had a tiny portion. She slept the remainder of the night in her cardboard box on a hay bed in the utility room and we were so happy to find her hungry around 7 am. So she is now over a week old, very healthy, perhaps not quite yet as big as her surviving brother and sister were at birth but full of life, settled in her funny life with humans, loving  the comfort of her cardboard box at night and jumping around in the sunny grass. We give her warmth, love, and since saturday real goat milk as the remaining two goats have given birth to a single kid each and are thus able to share their milk. With the surplus we’ve made feta cheese and kefir already and it is lovely to not have to buy milk again. Since we raised a pet duck a few years ago. keeping him close to us for the first months of his life in pockets and releasing him to a normal duck life when he was big enough to do so, we are not worried that this little thing will remember that she is a goat.