More new babies

Sandy and JJ Jackson - 5 hours old


First real nap they've had since being born. Exhausting!


Joel loving up his new boy JJ Jackson


Sandy and JJ Jackson at about an hour old.

Miss Lily Sassy Pants Ornery Goat had her babies too! On March 21st as a matter of fact, but I'm running behind and by the seat of my pants as usual o.O

Anyhoo...here are our newest members of the herd, Sandy and JJ Jackson. Lily has not accepted JJ Jackson, the black one. When we came out to the barn at 5 AM to check on Lily they had both been born already. She was laying down cleaning the lighter one, Sandy but the black one was wondering around toward the top crying with all his birth goo still on him. My husband was horrified we might lose him because it was cold and brought him into the house to dry him up real quick. Turns out we probably should not have done that. We SHOULD have put him to momma so she could recognize she had him and get him cleaned up. If a goat doesn't do that then they don't really realize they just had a baby. Silly I know. Don't ever let anyone convince you that goats are as smart as dogs. They most assuredly are not.

So miss Lily has not taken to her second boy. He did get his first 4 days of colostrum because I forced the issue but he has since been moved out of the main barn for his protection. More on that in the next post. In the mean time, here are the new pictures and video!

The last video has my rooster adding to the dialog!

New Babies!

It's been a while since I've posted. What's new right? Well new babies is what's new! We had our first set born on the 16th of March and the second set on the 21st of March.

This first set are a boy and a girl, both of whom we will be keeping. Cassie the little brown one is the girl and the white one, Shane. Shane will be our new buck so we can continue in the milk after having to dispatch our sweet boy Jack. Sad day. But anyway, he was a good boy and gave us four new babies.

Here are the first two and momma Amelia. Our daughter Heather is in little goat heaven! Note Amelia still has the birth goo, the babies are just one hour old here!

Learning the hard way

Well. I guess I'm going to have to admit that I really did learn the hard way. Darn it. I HATE having to learn the hard way. But I guess the upside to this is that I at least learned. And perhaps anyone at all who is thinking about goats might read this and realize they might not have to learn the hard way. Like I did.

What the heck am I talking about you ask???

Yes, goats. Bucks in particular. We are probably going to have to dispatch our yearling buck. He will not stay out of the girls pen. That is where we made our mistake. We did not realize that we should have separated him out from the start. We got the three goats, two doelings and buckling when they were 2 weeks old. He was adorable. He is still sweet but not so adorable anymore.

I'm not happy about this at all.

But we will try again with another buck and probably a wether to keep him company so we can still have milk and babies next year. These will start out separated from the starting gate.

I'm definitely sad this evening. :-(

Do not ever, ever run your young bucks with your does and think you can separate them at a later date. We did it because we felt sorry for the buck. We figured it would all work itself out in the end. Nope. Goats are herd animals. They need companionship and will go to great lengths or die to get it.

This sucks. :-( We did our sweet boy Jack a great diservice.