# help weaning pygmy goat!!



## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

I have a female pygmy bottle baby that I am trying to wean but in this last week need to know should I reduce the amount of milk I give her a little every day or just keep giving her the same amount and stop on the last day. I have done some research online on how much to feed her but it never said anything about changing the amount gradually on the last week... will feel very guilty to just not bring her some milk one day.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 1, 2017)

I would little by little reduce the amount of milk you are feeding her. Are you just giving her one bottle a day?


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

And what else as far as solids? We wean when the tell tale signs are present like witnessing the amount of solids are actually being consumed. We try to prevent bloat.
Like @Goatgirl47 said, reduce to a single bottle a day. We do the bottle and the end at the day as well. Greens and protein _slowly_.


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## Alaskan (Aug 1, 2017)

Are you able to feed her goat milk in the bottle?

How old is she?  From what I understand,  it is highly beneficial to feed them some milk for about 4 or 5 months. (But now I can find no articles to support this... -sigh-)


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## Alaskan (Aug 1, 2017)

As to weaning.... I started pouring the milk in with their oats, and so they switched from a bottle to sloppy oats.

Then over time I reduced the amount of milk added to the oats.


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

she will be 3 months old on Sunday and we are down to a bottle a day given to her first thing in the morning. She eats lots of Timothy that I have available all the time and she also eats purina goat chow  I only give her a cup a day aswell as let her forage around the yard. She seems a healthy weight and dosnt seem to be bloated.


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

But I will add that I had to switch her from Dumor goat kid replacer to whole cows milk because she kept getting the scours and she wasn't gaining weight when she was only a week old.


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

thank you guys for helping me with this lol wont feel so bad to lower her daily milk instead of just taking it away


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

OMG! Pictures!! Now!  
Just kid ding! Get it? Anyway..
Here is one of my bottle babbies. Nanny rejected him but excepted his twin sister. She sensed something wrong with him. He is older now and still a little small for his age. He has slow reaction time. Maybe neurological development probs but healthy physical wise.
We named him LUCK.. He has had bad luck and he has had good luck. Bottle fed for 60 or so days. Can't remember.
He is still my baby! These photo are about a year old.



 


Last one is hub, luck and chomper going for a ride on the eazy go after a bottle feeding!
​


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

aww he is beautiful   the first picture is of my little bottle girl twinkle toes and the second are of my boys helping us fix up an old shed lol the darker one is jack and the lighter is what what ... I just love goats they are all so unique in character


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

lovemywhatwhat said:


> aww he is beautiful   the first picture is of my little bottle girl twinkle toes and the second are of my boys helping us fix up an old shed lol the darker one is jack and the lighter is what what ... I just love goats they are all so unique in character


Twinkle toes!!  beautiful name for a beautiful goat! Your flock is so precious! Thanks for sharing.. We should compare notes sometime. Keep updating your thread, I'd like to know how all turns out. You are doing just fine and your flock is lucky to have you!


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 1, 2017)

aww thank you will forsure and your lucky is lucky to have you lol his name fits well


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 1, 2017)

Alaskan said:


> Are you able to feed her goat milk in the bottle?
> 
> How old is she?  From what I understand,  it is highly beneficial to feed them some milk for about 4 or 5 months. (But now I can find no articles to support this... -sigh-)



That's what I like to do too (wean later), but it isn't always possible.  I have an Alpine doe right now who I let nurse from her mother (our old milk goat) until her mother dried herself up. That doeling, along with her sister, were weaned at 7-8 months. I also bottle-fed my first bottle kid until she was 5 months.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 1, 2017)

They are all beautiful @lovemywhatwhat & @Farmer Connie!!


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

Goatgirl47 said:


> That's what I like to do too (wean later), but it isn't always possible.  I have an Alpine doe right now who I let nurse from her mother (our old milk goat) until her mother dried herself up. That doeling, along with her sister, were weaned at 7-8 months. I also bottle-fed my first bottle kid until she was 5 months.


We have weaned as little as 30 days to 8 months. Depending on the Nanny's health status. Nursing causes nutrition depletion. Sometimes especially with triplets, takes the life right out of her.  If her hips start to poke out, you want to limit access to her teets. We monitor the kids as they begin to eat along side of moma. As soon as they start to compete for the hard food and etc, we start the teet time limit, funneled down to total wean. Then the screaming begins! We have had some scream so long they lose they voice. We add a little honey to the feed to coat the throat. We have seen and learned a lot in only the ten years breeding our family pets. I love my flock! I feel like I am their Grandma in a sense..


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## Alaskan (Aug 1, 2017)

Farmer Connie said:


> If her hips start to poke out, you want to limit access to her teets.


Well... probably depends on the breed.

Any high production milk breed will have obvious hips (both cows and goats ).

It is better to watch the body condition score of the animal.

Here is an excellent video that goes over the body condition score for milk goats:





As long as you watch the feed of the milk goat, a gallon a day of milk production for over a year long lactation is easy to maintain.

Those ladies that produce 2 gallons a day, those are more difficult to keep the weight on!  

However...your choice if you wanna drink the milk yourself, let the kids have it...or just let her dry up.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 1, 2017)

@Farmer Connie - you have weaned one as early as 30 days? I am curious, how did the kid do (grow)? I know the minimum that most people wean is 8 weeks.

We watched our doe closely while she was raising those two kids. She did just fine with little grain - and she was a French Alpine.
We also wean our calves at around a year old. But when those calves get to be around 2 months they are separated 24/7 but get to nurse 1-2 times per day. One to two months later we only let those calves nurse once a day from their mommas and only on the days we don't milk (usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday).

With our goats we do it a little differently. I've only had goats for 3 years, so am still learning. But, I do like to have my dam-raised kids nurse until they are at least 4 months old. We watch their dams carefully and if they are getting pulled down from the constant nursing and nagging of their kids, we separate them during the day as well as the night, letting them nurse a few times a day. 

Right now what I do with my two Nubian milk does (one has a 2 month old kid on her and the other has a 4 month old) is when I milk (4-7 days a week) I separate the kids from around 4:00pm and milk the next morning somewhere between 8:00 and 10:00 am (I get a little lazy in the summer ). The momma with the older kid is as fat as a butter roll. We are watching them both closely though.


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

Alaskan said:


> Well... probably depends on the breed.
> 
> Any high production milk breed will have obvious hips (both cows and goats ).
> 
> ...


Thanks for addressing that I should of added our particular breed! Thank you..   We don't raise dairy goats, we have Nigerian crosses. Jolly good show mate!


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## Alaskan (Aug 1, 2017)

Too fat is also bad.... trying to get them at the perfect weight can be tricky,  but it is worth it in the long run.


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

Goatgirl47 said:


> you have weaned one as early as 30 days? I am curious, how did the kid do (grow)? I know the minimum that most people wean is 8 weeks


Miss Pearl died from complications. The kids were over sized and we had our mobile vet intervene. She had internal bleeding we wrote off as just leaking after birth. We procrastinated on calling her and she was down before she arrived. She needed surgery long before that moment and she was far too week for any procedure and it was a horrible experience. She went in to a comatose state. Just 2 months after our bruiser buck caused our oldest nanny to paralysis from a Stroke. She was due to deliver in only 2 months at that time. It was a rough couple months for us.
Miss Pearls babies were so healthy and already on grains and grass, so that aspect was a relief to the situation. Little Bah Buh..is an angel! She goes where I go. And into everything!



Hard to collect bell peppers for dinner with my buddy hanging out!



Her sis is a hand full too.



"Thing 2 and Thing 1... They can do anything anything under the sun"!
My babies..


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 1, 2017)

This is Bam Bam. He is no longer with us. He was to dangerous. He attacked everyone and stress killed our oldest nanny.







Hub had to put him down. He lost his composure way too often. He tried to gaff  my husband and flipped him over and would not let him get up. I thought Bam killed him. When he was able to get up, he sent me and our daughter to town while he put him down. 190# of evil. Was a gentle juvenile but thru age he went to the dark side. I miss him but he was too dangerous.


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## lovemywhatwhat (Aug 2, 2017)

wow hope my boys don't grow up like bam bam he was so pretty


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 2, 2017)

Awww, I'm so sorry about your does, and Bam Bam too.  

The two kids are so precious!


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## Farmer Connie (Aug 2, 2017)

Goatgirl47 said:


> Awww, I'm so sorry about your does, and Bam Bam too.
> 
> The two kids are so precious!


Thanks..
We still have 18 healthy beautiful 4 legged creatures to keep us bizzzy..
I'll look for some pics of Rhodie when he was tiny. We renamed him Bam Bam when he matured and started ramming everything and us. He snapped off and over a 5" fence post last breeding season. He wasn't afraid of the 8000 volt hotwires in his pen. He would hook them with his horns and pull back until they snapped in half. He would chase and harass our free range chickens.
He was confined to a pen when he tried to pull back the rear leg on our Black Angus cow and flip her over. I thought he broke her leg. She limped for a few days.
He was mean. I could go on and on with stories about his rotten disposition but I'll leave it at that. Our new Buck is a lover, not a fighter.


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