rachels.haven's Journal

[Baymule]

Galaxy is a beautiful girl!

Black Sea gulls! Hahaha! Just get a permit, shoot one and hang it up. The rest will stay away.

 

[rachels.haven]

Galaxy is a beautiful girl!

Black Sea gulls! Hahaha! Just get a permit, shoot one and hang it up. The rest will stay away.

Does that work if they nest down the street at the old abandoned general store? The attachment to the area is strong. On the flip side I don't think anyone would miss them if they did get strung up.

 

[Mini Horses]

Well, it should keep them from visiting your farm

Seems to work with crows. I can say, doesn't for possum!

 

[Baymule]

Yes, if you string one up, they will avoid your place. I think the limit is 3 per year.

 

[rachels.haven]

Today I separated the bucklings and doelings. The doelings have an LGD protected pen in the barn. The bucklings are sort of out of luck, but there are only four of them I kept, so I can put them indoors in the shop pen as needed. The kids picked Little Orchard CD Hera's buckling to retain who will probably wind up being wethered for being too intense, and I saved Moon Mist LOG Summer's triplet bucklings to grow out and pick one of to be Pete's spare. One looks thick in all ways, one long, and one steeper and wider rumped but at the same time delicate. The last might wind up being a wether. I'm biased towards the thick one. I'm not sure the long one will have enough "oomph" to put himself through rut or milk well and look good doing it if he were a doe, but I'll keep growing them both out and put up pics later. I'm enjoying watching them grow and change.

 

[rachels.haven]

I forgot to mention Especially Hera's buckling and one of Summer's too is displaying a tendency I've noticed before where especially Hera's buck kids have no moderation when on free choice milk of any temperature and eating themselves into scouring footballs. So the big reason for the split is so I can 3x a day bottle the four bucklings while letting the doelings have their free choice milk lambar buffet. I'm kind of hoping the kids let me let Hera's boy, "Cow" go because of this, and also the lighter, more delicate, and more steeper rumped one of Summer's...fat chance though. They want Cow. (If cow is like his half brother via Hera from the year before last he's not going to be nice come rut though so he will probably get a big band then and I won't feel bad for him)

 

[Ridgetop]

Goats are a bit different from sheep in terms of predators. While they need LGDs to protect them, they are more apt to circle around and present a defensive front to predators. That said, youngsters are not able to defend themselves. Once the bucks are grown, they can stand off some minor predators like single stray dogs or coyotes. Packs will overwhelm them, but if they have a 3-sided shed into which thy can retreat, they will face the opening and be less vulnerable. Sheep will just run making it easy for dogs and coyotes to pull them down.

Unless you truly don't like Cow's conformation or bloodlines I would not be in a hurry to band him. A lot can happen when youngsters are growing and the ugly one sometimes looks a lot better when grown.

So the big reason for the split is so I can 3x a day bottle the four bucklings while letting the doelings have their free choice milk lambar buffet.

Is there a reason you are using a free choice lambar instead of feeding a quart per kid per am and pm feeding? Allowing constant feeding in a lambar can result in overeating like Cow is doing. It also makes the kids less interested in eating hay. Once we had more kids than we could feed with a bottle in each hand a friend suggested bucket feeding. I bought a purchased feeding bucket with 10 nipples and tubes. I bought it from Caprine Supply. It came with a stand and lid. Once we held ech kid onto a nipple they learned quickly that this was the good stuff! LOL

This worked well until the kids got big enough to topple the bucket. Then we attached a light chain to a hook in the top of the pen, clipped it to the bucket handle, and set the buckets on old tire rims. That took care of the problem. When the bucket was removed the dangling end of the chain was hooked up to the eye bolt out of the way of the kids.

Since our herd grew so fast, I made my next buckets using commercial 5-gallon paint buckets that I scrubbed out thoroughly. I drilled 10 holes equidistant around the sides. Then I put in the nipples and straws available as replacements from Caprine Supply. (At that time they and Hoegger were the only goat suppliers around.) We had about 3-4 of these buckets in operation during kidding season.

I fed 1 quart of pasteurized milk for each kid and an extra quart for the bucket* in case someone was greedy or a slow drinker. Once the kids were several weeks to a month old they only got 2 feeds - am and pm. They had alfalfa hay at all times and only giving 2 feeds helped them eat hay faster. I would go out a couple times a day and fluff it up if they slept in it. LOL

I would strain all the milk, pour the house milk into glass bottles and store them in our house fridge. All the rest I strained into the pasteurizer cans. I ran 3 pasteurizers from 9:00 am until 1:00 pm. Then I added blue or green food coloring to the pasteurized milk to distinguish it from any unpasteurized milk still in the milk fridge. (I had a commercial Pepsi fridge - a friend picked several up used and sold me one.)

*We were milking up to 18 does, all were heavy milkers but since half were Nubians (routine trip and quads) we were feeding up to 60 kids at a kidding season. The buck kids were sold at a month old for meat. However, I often had to cut the goat milk with replacer for a couple weeks to have enough to feed all the doe kids. If we had a doe season, maybe longer.

 

[rachels.haven]

Goats are a bit different from sheep in terms of predators. While they need LGDs to protect them, they are more apt to circle around and present a defensive front to predators. That said, youngsters are not able to defend themselves. Once the bucks are grown, they can stand off some minor predators like single stray dogs or coyotes. Packs will overwhelm them, but if they have a 3-sided shed into which thy can retreat, they will face the opening and be less vulnerable. Sheep will just run making it easy for dogs and coyotes to pull them down.

Unless you truly don't like Cow's conformation or bloodlines I would not be in a hurry to band him. A lot can happen when youngsters are growing and the ugly one sometimes looks a lot better when grown.

Is there a reason you are using a free choice lambar instead of feeding a quart per kid per am and pm feeding? Allowing constant feeding in a lambar can result in overeating like Cow is doing. It also makes the kids less interested in eating hay. Once we had more kids than we could feed with a bottle in each hand a friend suggested bucket feeding. I bought a purchased feeding bucket with 10 nipples and tubes. I bought it from Caprine Supply. It came with a stand and lid. Once we held ech kid onto a nipple they learned quickly that this was the good stuff! LOL

This worked well until the kids got big enough to topple the bucket. Then we attached a light chain to a hook in the top of the pen, clipped it to the bucket handle, and set the buckets on old tire rims. That took care of the problem. When the bucket was removed the dangling end of the chain was hooked up to the eye bolt out of the way of the kids.

Since our herd grew so fast, I made my next buckets using commercial 5-gallon paint buckets that I scrubbed out thoroughly. I drilled 10 holes equidistant around the sides. Then I put in the nipples and straws available as replacements from Caprine Supply. (At that time they and Hoegger were the only goat suppliers around.) We had about 3-4 of these buckets in operation during kidding season.

I fed 1 quart of pasteurized milk for each kid and an extra quart for the bucket* in case someone was greedy or a slow drinker. Once the kids were several weeks to a month old they only got 2 feeds - am and pm. They had alfalfa hay at all times and only giving 2 feeds helped them eat hay faster. I would go out a couple times a day and fluff it up if they slept in it. LOL

I would strain all the milk, pour the house milk into glass bottles and store them in our house fridge. All the rest I strained into the pasteurizer cans. I ran 3 pasteurizers from 9:00 am until 1:00 pm. Then I added blue or green food coloring to the pasteurized milk to distinguish it from any unpasteurized milk still in the milk fridge. (I had a commercial Pepsi fridge - a friend picked several up used and sold me one.)

*We were milking up to 18 does, all were heavy milkers but since half were Nubians (routine trip and quads) we were feeding up to 60 kids at a kidding season. The buck kids were sold at a month old for meat. However, I often had to cut the goat milk with replacer for a couple weeks to have enough to feed all the doe kids. If we had a doe season, maybe longer.

Putting out cold milk lamb bars 24/7 (with a scoop of pasteurized milk yogurt mixed in) is a way to raise that's catching on in the show goat community lately. The herd I bought my nubian and one lamancha buckling from raised kids that way and they were huge and well grown and continued to grow well afterward. They were extremely well started. It impressed me so I decided to try this year. I would not be surprised if they borrowed it from the meat show goat/sheep community. They do get put back on bottles at 8-12 weeks for weaning. I am cutting their pasteurized milk with Does Match milk replacer so they never run out. I'm just pasteurizing in one of my 4 gallon cheese pots using my digital alarm thermometer to tell me when it hits 165-170, and drops below 115 afterward.

The coyotes got close enough the other night I had to put the bucklings back with the doelings in the main barn for LGD protection. Cow scoured for a day and has quit. Poops aren't perfect on everyone, but they are not scours and everyone appears to be maintaining condition well. As long as they don't run out they don't gorge.
I'm going to keep it up for this year and see how they do was far as growth and weight in fall. It's lower maintenance and there's only one lamb bar to clean, so fewer points for contamination. They still get bottles on prevention day so if I need to switch them back I can at any point.

 

[rachels.haven]

After laboring all day yesterday and all night Elsa kidded a 10 pound buck via a hard pull. She was in rough shape. I waited around an hour, bumped her, checked, et c and went in and took care of the kid. At 8 am (I slept in after staying up all night with hourly checks thinking that was it) I came out and she had another kid head and foot out and she had had it out for a long while and was in distress. So I pulled that one too. The second was 12 pounds. Huge heads, short necks, broad shoulders, all courtesy of her sire. He threw large kids and apparently so does she. Five, six days over due but she totally should have been able to go into labor on her own. And to top it off Elsa is huge, deep, but has her sire's narrow hips so there was no space!

This is the third time with her kids in the double digits. She can not pass them. If she gets bred in the future Elsa will never be bred standard again. It will be breed to Nigerian dwarf or cull.

 

[farmerjan]

Thank goodness you were diligent and got them both out, and live? ....by the looks of it...Those are big babies for any doe to kid...