Dam Raised, Bottle Raised, Trough Raised, & Pulling Kids

[Southern by choice]

Because I'm getting older and use a cane, I'm curious whether the trough fed kids would be less inclined to climb up on you than the bottle fed kids.

First Welcome to BYH!

I am outside on this glorious day finishing up many undone things as well as supervising 10 9 week old LGD pups so not much time to respond right now.

Later this evening I would like to give a more appropriate response and also share what we have learned from our experience so far. There are also some other concerns that a friend sent me some info about. I will share all of that later. Hope you stick around and maybe introduce yourself in the new members forum. We all enjoy meeting new members and hearing about their livestock and farms!

 

[Pearce Pastures]

Trough feeding is something our neighbor uses with his LaManchas and his goats are quite friendly. The only con he and I have discussed is the comfort in knowing that a bottled goat has eaten enough/ not too much or too little. With bottles, we can control the amount each drinks, preventing scouring and tummy issues from our little piggies. Doelings are not shoved out of the way by greedy bucklings. And if one goes off eating or is eating less than usual, it is easy to catch quickly. Watching as they use the trough is of course helpful for some of that, but measuring quantity isn't easily done unless individual troughs or bowls are used (which kind of defeats the ease of using one trough like he does).

That said, I have been doing more variety in how we feed (dam raised and bottle raised and combos of both). They all have the pro-con thing and the time of year and what we have going on at the time plays into that choice too. I would like to try the trough at some point, get a feel for how we might use it occassionally.