If we do start bottles, is it better to choose one kid to give bottles to, or spread them out among all of the kids? For example: Monday night - give a bottle to kid #1, Tuesday morning - bottle to kid #2, Tuesday evening - bottle to kid #3, then repeat. That would relieve some of the load on...
Thanks for the input everybody. We have two kinds of hay (one alfalfa, and the other grass) that we mix for their feed. I can up the alfalfa hay and give her some alfalfa pellets, which we also have. Her poop looked much better tonight, and her energy level seemed better. All three kids are...
My boer goat Mabel had Triplets late Friday night. Everybody seems to be doing well, but I am concerned that she will not be able to make enough milk for all three babies. All are nursing well, and we are weighing them often to make sure that they are gaining weight. Mabel has free choice of...
I have a doe that appears to be very pregnant. We do not know when she was bred, because she constantly jumped over the fence this summer and could have been exposed to our buck any time. We will soon be traveling about 8 hours by car to visit family. Normally we have a friend farm sit our...
I downloaded kintracks Animal Breeder, and I think it will do most of what I want. The only additional feature I want is a whole farm financial tracking. I see that kintracks will track financials for each individual animal, but I want to include feed, equipment, etc., so I don't need it...
Wow farmerjan! That sounds like a LOT of paper! Sounds like it works well for you, but that definitely isn't the direction I want to go. There should be a program that does everything that you're already doing. I just have to find it.
Thanks babsbag! I'll look into it. We've also been...
Do you use software to manage your herd? I'm looking for something where I can easily keep up with purchases/sales, calendar events (births, vaccinations, etc.), contact info for people (vets, breeders, etc.), and any other important info for my animals. I want to be able to run a search and...
We have udders on 2 of the 3, so I'm fairly confident they're pregnant. Since we don't know the breeding dates, the delivery dates are anybody's guess. I hoped to have kids a couple of weeks ago.
We think Magnus is pretty great too. The best part is that he's very human-friendly. Almost like a dog instead of a goat. He was raised by a young girl, so he is used to lots of attention.
We did make a kid preparation video a couple of weeks ago if anybody is interested.
Still no babies...
Our girls have been talking a lot recently. Have you noticed that with yours? Usually the only one who talks to me is Magnus, and he has a lot to say, but the girls are usually pretty quiet.
We got our first buck, Magnus, last fall and introduced him to our 3 does (Lucy, Ethel, & Mabel) on October 6. By my math, that means the earliest any of them could kid was last Friday, March 4. We don't know the exact dates that they were bred, but all 3 show signs of pregnancy. One is...
Does anybody feed used Christmas trees to their herd? I am considering placing an online ad offering to dispose of local trees, but I'm concerned about chemicals that might have been sprayed on the trees. In the past we've given them our personal tree that we cut down from a local tree farm...
We have a guard llama to protect our goats, alpacas, chickens, and a non-guard llama. She's always on the lookout for predators, and everybody runs to hide when she alerts, even when she sometimes alerts over unimportant things like a cat or a deer. :)
Does anybody use an aftermarket camera for their trailer hitch? We'd like to get one for our E350 van, since it seems we're always hitching and moving our trailers, and it's often necessary to do it solo. What brand/model would you recommend? We want something that's relatively easy to...
I'm considering putting collars on my three boer goats, but I'm concerned that they'll get caught on things and get hurt. I'd like to be able to move them around by collars. Plus they're little Houdinis, so collars would make it easier to catch them when they're loose.
I'd like to hear...