Triplets for Tanya Tucker and High Tide

We were hoping Tanya Tucker would kid on July 4th and indeed in the afternoon she was starting to show early signs of going into labor.  But she held off until the 5th.  

She was showing signs all morning that she was getting close, demanding massages, talking to her kids.   Around 3:30pm she laid down and got a few good pushes in and I thought she was ready to go, but then she got up and started pacing and trying different positions, some I have never seen before.   She wasn't anywhere close to be being fully dilated so chose to wait and see if she could get the kids shifted into position on her own.

Tanya talking to her kids

Finally around 7:30 she managed to push the head of a large buck kid.  No front legs just his head and he was stuck.  Took a little maneuvering but I finally managed to pull the handsome classical buckskin kid out.    As soon as his nose was clear he shook his head and showered my face in amniotic fluid.   Since I was already working to complete the deliver I had sputter and keep going.

He was followed fairly quickly by a properly presenting doe kid.   At first glance she appeared to be black and white.  But once she was dry we could see she was a very pretty tri-colored buckskin with white markings.   

Tanya is an experienced mom and got right to work cleaning up her babies.  The buck kid was born hungry and he lost no time in finding his feet and the teat without any assistance needed and his sister wasn't far behind. 

Tanya's discharge didn't seem quite right to me and I was considering going in for a feel in case there was another kid (she has kidded with triplets every time) when a bubble appeared.  But it was not a proper presentation in fact I have never seen anything quite like it.  She was a large kid and all balled up and on the final push came popping out like a cannonball.   She had defecated already, but we got her cleaned up and breathing okay and she quickly joined her siblings in nursing.

No names for either of the doe kids yet, but it will be related to some form of sweet or dessert as that is the theme my children wanted to have this year for naming.

The last due date for any of the remaining does would be July 13th but only Violet is uddering up at this point.  She is the only doe bred to Colby that took, but he was pretty young, and conditions were not optimal.  He was bred too all of the first freshening Tide daughters, so we will have to wait another year to see if he is improving udders.   He does seem to doing some slight improvements on conformation, but udders is the most important thing.