Enter Milkmaid

Tomorrow I'm going to milk Bella and hopefully get some actual milk to show for it instead of the two teaspoons I dump in the cats' bowl on the way back into the house. Although I have been milking Bella, I have been getting almost nothing from her. This is apparently because Heckle is taking all the milk for himself. So one way of dealing with this is shutting the baby away from the mama at night so you can milk the mama first thing in the morning and then let the baby go with her during the day. That was my plan from the start, but when we lost Jeckle, I felt bad shutting Heckle by himself. I thought about leaving Heckle out with Betty Bob and Bambi and shutting Bella up for the night, but Betty Bob is sort of bossy and I didn't want her to butt him without his mama around to protect him. So I thought of shutting Bambi up with Heckle because she seems to like him. They will play together in the yard some, and Bambi has fallen to the bottom of the pecking order among the adult goats. But I felt bad splitting up Betty Bob and Bambi because they are very close. They sleep cuddled up together at night, and although Betty Bob is the boss, she doesn't try to keep Bambi in place like she does Bella. I think this is because Bambi knows her place and doesn't present a threat to Betty Bob. So in the end, I just put Heckle into the pen by himself when I fed them this evening. The crying from the goat barn almost broke me when we got home from eating dinner out. Bella and Heckle were both in the barn making a ruckus. She was standing right by the door to the pen maaing for him, and he was inside crying his head off. The goats are right outside our window, and I don't hear anything now. So I'm hoping they've all settled down to bed. I feel so guilty...

Arghh...apparently he felt my guilt vibes because he's crying again. Obviously I have never let my kids cry it out because I can hardly manage to let a goat do it! I'm not going out there...Be strong.