Dairy goat management includes psychology, trust me.
When baby goats are born you need to separate out the babies and bottle feed them until they are weaned and then you can return them to the herd.
The video above shows what happens when your kids are piggish, dont wanna stop nursing, and the momma goat refuses to push them away.
What a hair raising adventure in animal husbandry this week!
We had contracted with a sheep/alpaca/llama shearer to come down from upper Vermont to shear our llama.
Its not humane to keep a halter on a llama for long so she generally is free of any fetters, running wild with the goats in their acre enclosure.
To be sheared, she needed to have a halter on. She is VERY skittish and only tolerates us barely touching her when she has her head in the feed bucket. She pulls away quickly even then.
Kidding Drama
Things have been very busy around here due to it being a long drawn out kidding season. We had girls who got pregnant over several estrus cycles so the babies were kidded out over quite a long period.
We ended up with 10 kids I think. 6 of them are female which we will keep (and have all been disbudded now) and the 4 males will be sold.
This brings us to something like 22 goats total, lots! We have been letting the babies nurse but tomorrow we will separate them and start milking. At first the milk goes to the babies and then we will wean them and have the milk for ourselves.
Meet Nibblet! One of our new LaMancha baby goats.
Our goats have begun to deliver their babies. We had 3 arrive yesterday alone. Sort of tiring! I have posted a Flickr slideshow below for your viewing pleasure.
To get rid of the tiny thumbnails along the bottom of that slideshow, just pass your cursor over the display.
If you can not see that, click here to go to that flickr set.
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (13), KD (6), and Baby Oh (3). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 16 LaMancha dairy goats, 30 chickens, and one guard llama.
