Your Weaning Method

[Hobby Farm]

I have been doing some research on weaning kids. It seems there are many different philosophies out there. We are trying to decide exactly how we are going to do it.

Please share with me how you wean your kids. Please include when you pull them off Mom, what you bottle feed them (replacer or milk from Mom), and at what age or weight they should be exclusively on hay/grain.

Thanks for your input.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

It's been a while since I've weaned kids. I'll tell ya how we wean lambs, which I'm guess is pretty similar to how I'd do it if my kids were dam raised. We wean lambs at 8 weeks, and by then they're still nursing on mom some, but they're also eating hay and creep feed (grain) as the majority of their diet. We just separate them (out of sight and earshot if possible) from their mothers and stop feeding mom grain (to stop milk production). I'd guess if you were doing this with dairy goats you'd continue to milk her, so her ration may not change much. Meat goats I'd imagine to be similar to sheep, because you don't want mom continuing to produce milk with no kids.

My kids now are being bottle raised (and we've had bottle lambs), so we'll wean somewhere around 8-10 weeks depending on the individual animals. My kids are only 2 weeks, so in a week or two I'll start providing them fresh hay and grain daily so they get started nibbling. By 8-10 weeks they should definitely be eating solid foods really well. I'll probably start a week or week and half in advance, slowly reducing the size and frequency of the bottles (three times daily down to two). Then I'll just stop bottles all together and they will be soley eating solid foods.

That's how I do it.

 

[michickenwrangler]

I have an unusual situation since my one doeling is fighting off an infection and my buckling is so healthy and big he's trying to fight the adult goats through the fence.

Bear, the buckling, two weeks ago was drinking a bottle of milk twice a day.

Then he got half bottle twice a day

Now he's getting a quarter bottle twice day

Next week he'll get quarter bottle once a day

Week after, no bottle.

The doeling, I fill a bottle and let her drink as much as she wants twice a day. I'll worry about weaning her when her infection clears up, probably following the same method.

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

We have just weaned one kid (he's about 10 weeks now) and he was pretty easy surprisingly enough. The other two (~7 and 8 weeks) apparently do NOT appreciate the process. Our buckling, The Pie, has the most amazing lungs! He yells so loud he doesn't even sound like a goat sometimes, it's weird. I will be soooo happy when everyone is weaned and our barnyard is quiet again.

 

[RockyToggRanch]

When I weaned my bottle buckling last year, I did it cold turkey. I did so on a nice sunny day and gave him lots of exercise that day and nice fresh hay and grain (as always, but I played it up to make it special....he was okay with it. I braced myself for the worst, but he never cared. When he ran to me in the morning for a bottle, I had grain in my hand instead. He was easy

 

[()relics]

At 90-100 days the does go out to the pasture, the pasture with the best fence. The kids stay inside the barn with the doors pulled closed. It is noisey for a few days but all the drama ends in a week or so...The does, that had been on a lactation ration, no longer recieve any feed. They have access to free choice hay. I check on them a couple of times a day and if they let me, and most do, I strip a little milk from them to relieve the pressure. The kids, which had been with their mothers and had access to their ration which is medicated with decox, are increased in daily amounts of feed ration, again with decox to prevent coccidiosis, and given free choice hay. I just weaned the first batch of does this year. They had December kids and I have been busy with the fence repair....JME

 

[ThornyRidge]

I have done 3 different methods.. the most used is cold turkey.. typically around 8-12 weeks depending on the kid-pulled off mom and voila it worked fine.. this also depends on how well they are eating/drinking and holding their own around other goats. the other method I tried was the gradual wean where separate kids from mom for longer and longer periods of time.. this did not work so well.. then there is the tried and true let doe wean kids herself.. this year specifically I was left with two doe kids from two different dams and just left all to fend for themselves.. the does actually did a good job kicking the kids off and drying themselves up. I was surprised because I honestly would have thought it would drag on for a long time and actually the kids would just sneak drinks here and there and moms kicked off around 5 months and one maybe a bit longer... worked ok here but who knows if it would be like that again.. there are many different philosphies on this you just have to find the best one for you.

 

[Scout]

Mama's in one pen, kids in another on the other side of the ranch at 7-12 weeks (although I had one that weaned himself at 3 weeks , healthy as can be though. No, mama didn't reject him, he just decided enough was enough I guess lol. Go figure.)