Valentine’s Day at the Ranch: Love, Love Everywhere!

It’s Valentine’s Day, and we have been blessed with 17 beautiful babies so far. What better vision of love than a mom taking care of her newborn babies? This is Macy, here, with her brand new bucks out of Fritz. She’s living with Sergio Garcia and family not far from us, so we had to go check out the babies when they arrived.

Aren’t they gorgeous? This was taken shortly after Macy gave birth. You can see the new little ones haven’t even gotten ahold of their legs yet. But we were so pleased to see her taking such good care of them. She’s turned out to be a great little mom.

Back at the Swan View Ranch, our barn is teeming with new kids. Here’s one of our little does out of Tara. Gerald named her “Misu.” For those of you who don’t know, Gerald is Italian, and “tiramasu” is one of his favorite desserts. He figured with a mom named “Tara” (it’s close, right?), why not name the baby “Misu?” Okay, no one said we were rocket scientists around here! Anyway, Misu is a lot of fun to watch. She’s always bouncing around and she loves to have you hold her on your lap, but only for a short time as she is super active and has to get going again. She has mastered the wooden stumps, as you can see here, and is already eyeing the concrete riser. We’re sure she’ll be queen of that before long.

Misu’s brother’s name? Another super creative one. Remember the old song “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay?” If you don’t, that’s all right. It was first introduced in Boston in 1891! So the mom is “Tara,” and son is…..ready for this? “Boom!” If she’d given birth to one more we would have had a “De-ay,” but no such luck.  (If you can’t get the song out of your head now, don’t blame us.)

Back to the story. Misu and Boom were our first babies out of our new buck Semi Load. We have six of his babies so far this year and are very pleased with what he has done. These little ones are broad-chested, stout, and sweet as can be. Talk about disposition! We’re really looking forward to having more next year. Semi is now a year old and is a big beautiful boy, so we’ll be putting him with a few more does next time around.

Pete has put out some beauties so far, too, and you can always tell which ones are his. Look at this sweetheart. She’s named after her father—Pistol Packin’ Peggy! But she’s the spitting image of daddy. Just look at the beefiness in her chest and legs. Plus we love that dark color Pete puts on his offspring. We can always count on him to make it easy on our first-time moms, as well. For some reason his babies are always just the right size to cause them no trouble, so they get to thinking that hey, this having babies stuff is not so hard!

Clark has also been busy as usual, and putting out some gorgeous kids. This fiesty boy we named “Blazer,” as he is out of Mercedes and we have to stay with the cars, here! But we picture him as the rock star of the group, as he seems to march to the tune of his own drummer. We’re actually surprised that he hasn’t pierced his ear yet, though we’re sure his parents wouldn’t approve.

What about our super cat nanny? Well as always, she’s on the job. She’s been watching over all the mamas as they prepared to give birth, and now, she’s put herself in charge once again of making sure everyone is towing the line! Don’t worry, though. She may talk tough, but she is an old softy. We caught her actually sharing her bed with one of the babies! Can you imagine a cat sharing her bed?

She’s also kind enough to share a lap as well, or a wooden stump, or whatever. (See more pictures of her on our Baby page.) Seems wherever she is there is one or more babies with her! She just loves them all, and is so happy this time of the year, like a regular mother hen. It’s her job to watch over the kids while their mamas have some time off to go eat and relax, and she takes it very seriously. She also watches over the mamas that haven’t had their babies yet. She wants to make sure everything goes well with them!

Many of our neighbors have been down to admire the babies and we do so appreciate them coming and watching over our little ones even if we aren’t here. This last weekend we had some neighbors with little grandchildren come, so Gerald took Stana out (named after the actress on ABC’s “Castle”—she’s just as pretty!) to let the the kids pet her. She is out of Bella and Semi and is a very loveable little girl. (She’s the one on the stump here in the picture.) She has the nicest hair, too. I wish I had a coat like hers when it’s damp and windy! She fell asleep in Gerald’s arms while the little ones were petting her. Disposition is a must on Swan View Ranch and our babies are all very loveable.

During the daytime we try to find at least a little while to sit up at the barn and just watch them all play. They bounce up and down like they’re legs are made of springs, toss and shake their heads, and run from one side of the pen to the other as if they’re all high on Red Bull. Yet these little ones need no caffeine to find the joy in life, and they inspire us to go back down to the house with smiles on our faces and love in our hearts.

Nighttime finds all 17 babies in their baby goat pen with the heat lamps on and everyone sound asleep. Note the super cat nanny in their midst. She’s singing a lullabye and wishing them all sweet dreams until the sun comes up again.