Goat Birthing Madness: The Elite Eight

We're in the midst of our own version of March Madness. Goat Birthing Madness. A week ago we posted about Sandia, our first goat born on the farm. Over the intervening time we had four more does kid and now we're awash with eight little baby goats. We have one more expecting mother, Mayday, who is due on April 8th, and then our kidding season is over for the year. It's been a joy and a true privilege.

First up, the photos, because that's what everyone really wants to see! At the end I posted a few takeaways.

The Elite Eight, in reverse birthing order:

1Oak and Santos Party House, born to Tenjune (the bad NY nightclub line)

Milk lips. Ready for a napCalima and Chinook, born to Zephyr (names of winds)

Calima, born to our Alpine buckChinook, born to our Nubian buck

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Goat Buck Pad


My lovely wife putting on the finishing touches

Male animals on the farm are a difficult proposition. They’re harder to manage, they’re stronger and they generally only have one thing on their mind. Yet you need them to make milk. If you don’t have babies you don’t have milk. So we needed some bucks to help us breed our ladies this fall for milk in the spring.

Enter Gozer and George. One is a Nubian (such as Bridget) and one is an Alpine (such as Mayday and Sabine, Queen of the Truck Roof). Both have excellent blood lines for milk production, which is a critical quality for our bucks. They are responsible for 50% of the genetics in our herd. Each doe has less of an impact than the bucks. Yet neither buck has produced kids, so we can’t be sure that their progeny will be up to par. But that’s the risk you take with bucks. No one wants to sell you their best buck, you almost always have to go with an unproven youngin’ from good blood lines.

 

 

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Weaning. Ugh.

We started the process of weaning Sabine the day before yesterday. This involves separating her from her mother, Mayday, who she has been nursing on for her entire 3 months of being. To make this work we need to keep Sabine in a place where her mom is inaccessible, basically, in a paddock far away from the rest of our goats for a bit. Goats are herd animals and having Sabine be by herself during weaning would make an already trying time even more stressful, so we chose Karmen, one of the more adventurous and spunky Nubian kids to keep her company. Karmen had been weaned when we brought her and three other Nubian doelings to our farm from their previous home at a dairy a few hours away. She and her floppy eared friends had adjusted quickly to life without mom and milk, and we hoped she'd pass that attitude on to Sabine as well as give her some comfort with her presence. 
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