One of our goats was very, very pregnant and finally gave birth a couple days ago. Three of the babies were stillborn but the fourth was healthy. It was a difficult birth for the mother (goats normally only have two babies at a time, four is very unusual), and she died this afternoon. Our other nanny isn't pregnant and hasn't been for 6 months, so she can't nurse, nor can our elderly ewe (though she's showing strong maternal instincts), so we're going to have to bottle feed him.

We've named him Ruthven (pronounced "riven"), after the protagonist in the opera Ruddigore. All our goats have been named after Gilbert & Sullivan characters. The name is also a bit of a play on words, albeit a sad one: "riven" means "torn apart" and little Ruthven was torn away from his mother.

He's barely a day old in this photo.