Last night when I got home from my daughter's symphony concert I found our broken black mini rex Clarilla nest building and pulling fur like she was going to make herself bald. As you can imagine this sparked a lot of excitement and anticipation here in our home.
All of our past litters were born in the wee hours of the night while we have slept and never before have I had the opportunity to watch mama doe nest or give birth. I was able to stay up pretty late for the event this time since it was underway much earlier in the evening. You can watch the video I took of the her below.
It was an amazing event and I feel very blessed to have been able to witness the birth of her single kit last night. Unfortunately it is common for first time dam's to lose whole litters and it is even more difficult for those litters when they are singleton's and don't have litter mates to help each other keep warm. This morning during feeding time, I noticed that our singleton was plastered with fur from mom all over his face and cold. So we brought mom and kit in warmed the baby up, cleaned the last of the birthing mess off of him and gave him a chance to nurse. Then we took them both back out to the barn.
When checking on the kit two hours later and this tiny single kit had managed to uncover itself and get so cold it might as well have been frozen. We are very sad here today as we announce that all attempts to revive the kit were unsuccessful. Since we know that first litters are usually difficult while sad we are still hopeful that Clarilla's future litters will be more successful.
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