Goat Kids are healthy and strong

My goat kids are really growing like weeds. Everyone is healthy and strong. It's interesting to see the different qualities of the babes from the three mothers. All total I have 8 kids out of the three does, two being two years old and one is a first year freshener. Excellent stock so far, I am very impressed.

One of the more humorous parts of this whole experience is well, experience. This is our third year of having goats, second year in milk. I'm getting an average of 2.5 gallons of milk from the three does and it's my understanding that is pretty darn good for such young goats. They will come into their prime between 4-6 years. The two older ladies are only half dairy so it's even more impressive. The young doeling is mostly Nubian as her sire was a full blooded Nubian. Mom and her sister are 1/4 La Mancha, 1/4 Nubian and 1/2 Boer. So all in all, I'm very pleased.

On to the humor part. Last year, we kept two young bucks. One as a sire and one as his companion wether. Sandy, the two horned goat below is supposed to be the wether. Supposed to I say because this spring I noticed something. He had a testicle. Just one. But it explains why he and Shane, the sire had such horrific battle in the pen last fall. I was so baffled!! We castrated him (we thought) and we READ that the whethers have no interest in the rut!

It turns out that we did not get both of the little buddies when we banded him last year. One of the little buddies slipped right up and away to hide. Just to come back down later when it was safe to do so. Once we noticed that we thought well now, who is the father of all these kids?? It's my understanding that the one balled boys usually can't impregnate, but I know my luck. Sheesh.



SHANE - the unicorn and SANDY the "wether"

The second humorous story is our abysmal failure at dehorning last year. Remember, this was our first year of having to do any of this stuff. We bought our first three kids all done up and taken care of. Buck intact and all dehorned beautifully. Not only did none of our dehorning work, we have a buck, Shane, who is a Unicorn. We have poor Sandy, the supposed whether having had the bad experience of having to be dehorned twice...and he has two big horns. That poor boy has been run through the ringer of our learning process. I feel so sorry for him. He's such a sweet boy. Actually both of the boys are super sweet. I just will not go in that pen with them. They are so big and they just LOVE you to death. Gentle rubs and pushes just about ran me through the wall a few months back so I'm just not going in there again without a prod. As sweet as they are, they are goats after all. Wow! Sadly, we can't keep Sandy and he's no good as a buck, or at least that anyone would buy on a chance. So he will be in the freezer here soon.



SANDY - the supposed "wether" and dehorned, twice.



JASMINE and FAUNA on the left, wanting their bottle. JASMINE'S brother AB1 (he's going to the freezer in fall, can't name food) is to the right. Kids are 10 weeks old here. The two girls are my house girls that started out life with bottle. I'm feeding them a little longer than the other kids that I weaned at 8 weeks.

FAUNA my sweet little "heart" girl. She has a perfect little heart on her back. I love this baby. She will be a keeper of course :-)

Kids in the barn at about 6 weeks old. Learning how to battle it out for the grain feed. The black one is our new whether named Christopher (after a good friend of ours) He will hopefully replace Sandy as the companion wether to the buck, Shane (his daddy I presume)

A bunch of curious babies!

More curious kid pictures. It's kind of like having human kids. Once I have pictures I can't stand it. I have to share all of them. It was difficult to figure out which ones to leave and which to post. I behaved and did these...few. :-)

More posts to come with the milk and cheese!

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.