Livinwright Farm's Journal - Our life with goats

[Livinwright Farm]

We don't mind the waiting when we KNOW they are pregnant... if we don't know 100% for sure, then the waiting just about kills us.
Daisy had been bred to an unproven buck that only "attacked" her when she wanted nothing to do with him... so it was a 50/50 chance of pregnancy... and it doesn't seem like it has worked out. We will still be keeping an eye on her in December(if we still have her then, if not we will tell the new owner to) just in case she was just overly hormonal and exhibiting false heat signs a couple weeks ago.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Yesterday we took a nice drive with a friend to go look at and buy some goats... and here are the 5 we bought!

3 of them are blue eyed(2 doelings, 1 buckling), and they are all from the same litter of triplets! How often does that happen when the dam is brown eyed and the sire is bluue eyed? I'm assuming not often.
The other two are brown eyed bucklings(share the same sire as the triplets).

The cute black & white midget is one of the doelings.

This is the other doeling

HighNote with the new boys

The blue eyed buckling - he is ALL buck too just like his daddy!

 

[elevan]

Are you leaving all the boys intact?

 

[that's*satyrical]

Cute!!

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Are you leaving all the boys intact?

No. If we did that I would from having too many bucks next spring/summer! We are, however, questioning whether or not we should wether the blue eyed buckling. We would like to up our chances of getting blue eyed kids next year... but not sure if we want to find a rent a buck that is blue eyed or just keep the one intact boy with HighNote...

 

[elevan]

Ah, just wondering what your plans were...cause that would be a lot of intact boys

 

[that's*satyrical]

I would keep him buck, just in case. Then if something (lord forbid) ever happened with highnote you would still have a herd sire. Plus, you could mix your genetic pool more without having to worry about renting a buck and watching heats & all that entails...

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Ah, just wondering what your plans were...cause that would be a lot of intact boys

Uh, Yeah! An insane amount given that our number of girls will only be six total come breeding season 2012

 

[Livinwright Farm]

I would keep him buck, just in case. Then if something (lord forbid) ever happened with highnote you would still have a herd sire. Plus, you could mix your genetic pool more without having to worry about renting a buck and watching heats & all that entails...

Those are some very good points that our family will have to think about...
And thanks, we think they are too, especially the little blue eyed buckling & the tiny blue eyed spotted doeling

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Okay, the little spotted girl, the black girl, and the blue eyed boy are around 7 weeks old.... the black girl is 14.2 lbs, pretty much on the money for development... but the pocket sized spotted girl is only 6.6 lbs. The people we got them from said that she barely suckled, because her brother and sister would push her out of the way... when they were done she would be allowed to suckle, but only if the dam was not too sore from the others. IMO, she looks, feels, and in all other ways is as if she was born a week ago, instead of 7 weeks ago.
Wondering if she will ever be full sized, or if she is forever stunted. Anyone here ever had a tiny kid turn out normal sized? if so, what did you do to get them back on track developmentally? Should we just let her suckle off Momma as much as Momma will put up with and give her free choice Goat Grower & Calf Manna?