Twinkie and Bluebell as kids
I love having baby goats.
They are sweet, bouncy and so much fun. If you are feeling low you can’t’ watch baby
goats for long and not crack a smile. I rarely keep any baby goats to raise. I only need a few goats to supply the milk we
need here. I only keep a baby from my best breedings to
replace the adult milkers I want to retire every few years. But with the “great goat experiment” going on
I have to keep a generation or two of the next few breeding from all the does
on the whole property! YIKES! And raise them all up to being milkers to see
who stays and who gets sold. I haven’t had to do this in years. Yes, we will have many extra goats for a while. (year or two) But the end products will be way worth it.
I always take the babies as soon as they are born and bottle
feed them. It makes for very tame easy
to handle milkers if I am keeping any. Since
they are all bottle babies I can sell the ones I don’t want to keep immediately
and not have the work of bottle feeding since I am not keeping them anyway. Also for me bottle feeding is best because I want
the extra milk for my family. I have in
the past let goats raise their kids. I would
let the babies nurse all day and separate the babies off the moms at
night starting at two weeks old. Then I would
milk out all the milk from the night in the morning and put the babies back with their moms
for the day to nurse all day. They
always did fine this way as well. But
being I sell most of my babies I just prefer to have them nursing well on
bottles already when they go to their new homes. That way I don’t worry about them. I make
sure they got their colstrum and are nursing well before I sell any.
Twinkie, Bluebell and the little buckling from their triplet kidding.
As I said I love baby goats but do not like the chore of
bottle feeding. When I do keep them for
myself I try to bottle raise the kids at least to 12 weeks old to give them the
best growth and health. Bottle feeding
Twinkies babies (Amelia and Mini bell) is
starting to get really old. Even though
Carolyn does it for me (starting at about four weeks old) while I am working in the barn after I milk. I am so ready for them to stop consuming so
much milk so I can start making cheese and such again. Right now Twinkie has been producing enough
milk to feed both the babies and take care of our need of milk. But we have
had nothing extra for cheese or making things from milk.
I realized that
Twinkies kids turn 8 weeks old in a few days.
They were born as preemies on January 25th. They were born 11 days early and I had to
tube feed them at first. But as soon as
their suck reflex kicked in they started nursing well. On full sized babies once they can drink 20 ounces
in one nursing I drop them down to two bottles a day. One in the morning and one at night. Twinkies
two babies have been on two 20 ounce bottles a day for the last five weeks. As of the last few weeks they are drinking
a little water from a bucket, eating grain and hay and growing well.
I decided to cut them back to one bottle a day starting this
morning. So I am just going to give them
only a night bottle until I wean them.
They were not happy. It will take
them a few days to adjust. I am slowly
raising their grain intake to compensate.
Sad baby goats eating their breakfast of grain after having their morning bottle taken away for the first time.
I guess the main reason to go ahead and try to get them
weaned in the next few weeks is because Bluebell is due to kid on April 10th! Any does she has I am going to keep as it is
the first breeding of her and my Nigerian Dwarf buck, Major Coco and Bluebell is
my best milker. Anyways, if she has any
does I will be back to bottle feeding several times a day for a while and have
those babies to attend to. So I really
want Twinkies kids weaned before all that transpires. Although one bottle a day for them and
working on new kids won’t be to bad if I think they need to keep nursing a bit
longer.
The other issue I need to work out is that with Bluebell
freshening I will have two very good milkers in milk. 2 gallons (or more) a day to find something to do
with. We really don’t need all that
milk. So I will probably start to milk
Twinkie only once a day so as to have less milk. I might just milk both goats once a day and
that will be better for us as far as milk usage in our home. Slowly backing off on milking and getting a
goat down to once a day milking will cut their milk production at least in
half. So a half gallon a day from two
goats would be fine. Actually still a
bit much for us. But we always find
yummy uses for it. From ice cream to
cheese, custards to pudding we will find
a use. :)
Blessings,
susan
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