Three Day old Kids

   

"Sven"

"Sven" and "Anna"

     We just picked up our "new babies" last night from our friend, Tasha, because the mother wasn't able to feed them.  And Tasha didn't want to bottle feed them, so we adopted them.

     On our way home from picking them up, we stopped at Barrett's baseball game at Judson College. And at about the 6th or 7th inning, some of our kids and our friends went to let the babies out of their basket in the car so they could feed them and let them prance around for a little bit.  

     Then all of a sudden, as we were watching the game and talking, I looked over to the left because I could hear the babies crying.  And here came two of our friends walking toward us holding the babies.  And, oh, I just wanted to crawl into a hole!!  They were so loud!  I couldn't believe that they came up by us and even though there were about 30 people in the bleachers, it was very quite; almost like a golf game - quiet.  And the cry of the babies just magnified in the silence.  I was almost sure the umpire was going to stop the game and have us thrown out of the park!  Thankfully, he didn't and the game went on as usual.     

      It's not every day that you see a goat at a baseball game in the suburbs of Chicago.  So it's kinda of hard to know what people were thinking, and at the time, I really didn't want to know.  So I told the kids to quickly take them down from the bleachers and they did.

     Sooooooo, where do you think they took them?  To the only other place that they shouldn't have which was just behind the dugout for the Addison Braves!!

     "Are those goats?" the guys on the team asked.  And, "What kind of crazy people would bring goats to to a baseball game?" they said.   Barrett told them they belonged to his family and they thought that was "cool".  Then one of the coaches said, "No, those aren't baby goats, those are lambs!"  Apparently it was pretty funny because the whole team started laughing.  It was funny to hear the laughter coming from the dugout and then the team trying to talk to the goats at the same time!  Looking back, it was probably a good thing because it helped turn a maybe stressful and boring game into something that the team will remember.   

     Since birth, Sven couldn't figure out how to drink from a bottle so he had to be force fed.  But Anna was eating just fine.  So today we decided to make the hole in the nipple a little bigger and then Sven was able to drink out of the bottle without having to force feed him, which was really nice. 

     Tasha wasn't sure if Sven was going to make it, but so far he's doing good.  We'll just do our best to keep taking care of him and pray that he makes it.  

     Today was the day that we were scheduled to be at the opening day of a new Farmer's Market in West Chicago, IL, that we will be participating in for the market season, and we had to take the babies with us.  At first, I was a little reluctant, but I didn't want anyone of us to have to leave the market to go and feed them so we brought them along. 

     It was fun to see the reaction on some of the people's faces at the market when the babies would start "crying".  Soon we had people coming over to see if what they heard was really what they thought the heard.  One of the gentlemen asked what we were going to bring to the market the next week and I told him that maybe we would bring some of our baby chicks that we just picked up from the hatchery.  What better place to have a little more interest in animals then at a Farmer's Market and for the "city" people to see where their food actually comes from!! 

     Tomorrow we will head back to the ranch with our new kids in their basket and introduce them to the place where they will spend their growing up days.
  
June 4, 2014.
Sandy