Bolingo’s Goat Herd Grows

It’s a boy!! Bolingo Village’s newest baby goat, that is. I’ll be honest; it’s been quite the ride getting to this point. After all, we’re not exactly dairy goat experts. However, we were determined to be successful at increasing self-sustainability in the village. So, we embarked on our dairy goat journey with loads of research, trial and error, and prayers. Here’s how we got here:

Bolingo Village’s first baby goat, Democratic Republic of Congo

Let there be goats! 

In February of 2020, we purchased 10 dairy goats. Sounds simple enough, right? So we thought - but since dairy goats aren’t common in Bolingo’s region, they boarded a plane to get to us. Sadly, two of our new herd members didn’t make it, and only 8 goats remained, one male and 7 females. 

Are they, or aren’t they? 

Our vet came to the village frequently to check on the goats and determine if any were pregnant. He said that five of them were! Months went on, and it was clear that they were not. So, we switched vets. He said that we almost certainly had 3-5 pregnant goats. As you can imagine, vet training and equipment are pretty different in DRC.   We waited the 5-month gestational period to no avail; still no baby goats. We were seriously considering figuring out how to make a goat take a CVS pregnancy test. Amid this confusion, I made a trip to Bolingo and saw for myself that several goats were definitely (maybe?) pregnant. How pregnant, though? There was nothing to do but prepare, wait, and see. 

A series of unfortunate events. 

Nearly back to back, we had one mama have a miscarriage, one give labor by c-section, and one give birth to two fragile babies. Unfortunately, we lost a mom and 3 babies in this tumultuous time. The one silver lining is that we still got milk for the kiddos at Bolingo. So, we did more research, said more prayers, and made some adjustments to how we were caring for our goats. We considered nutrition, the heat in Congo, and common diseases - anything to ensure that our next mama would give birth to a healthy baby. 

FINALLY 

Two days ago, we finally had a mama goat give birth to a very healthy, spry baby goat. He was immediately able to stand up and get milk from his mom. It was music to our ears. At last, we have a new male to join the herd, AND we have two moms providing milk for the kiddos in the village. We’re confident that this winning streak will continue and that we will keep growing our goat fam and provide more and more milk to the Bolingo Fam. Cheers!