Meet Nanna. She is a lifesaver. Literally. If you remember, last Saturday when out goats were having all these kids my BF went to buy us a milk goat. Why you might ask? The truth is, while triplet goats are awesome, the chance of one not surviving is huge. Yes, we lost one from our first set of triplets. I am sorry. He went to that big goat bridge in the sky. We talked to our goat expert friends and they told us that a Mom Goat just can not raise triplets successfully. One either dies from being pushed out or the Mother gets her health compromised. Your choices are to take one off and bottle feed it or take it to a sale and let someone else bottle feed it. I don't know why Mother nature is cruel like this. To those of you who read this and have had your Nanny raise triplets successfully, I say,"GREAT!" It doesn't happen for us. Perhaps because of the breed of our goats. But anyway back to "Nanna".
Bottle feeding is not what it's cracked up to be. It's expensive, the babies tend not to thrive as well and they will always consider YOU their Mother which is cute at first but then it gets to be a real pain when they are a demanding 150 pounds. Trust me here. Our compromise was to go out and purchase a Milk goat before we had any more triplets! So the goats are kidding. BF goes out to buy milk goat(a 2 hour drive). Son and I are home watching goats about to deliver and sure enough another one has triplets! We call BF and tell him. Soon enough we see a cloud of dust coming down our road. It's BF driving like no tomorrow on our bumpy dusty road, pulling our stock trailer with Nanna inside. I look at son. Son looks at me. I say, " Dang! When he gets here Nanna will be making butter instead of milk!" Son cracks up and says he was thinking the same thing!
Nanna arrives fine and we set about making her feel welcome in her new home. We milk her for a couple of days and let the triplets get all of their life giving colostrum from Mom. Then we take one off. We give her to Nanna. Well, we make Nanna take her. We still have to go down to the barn every few hours and hold Nanna while Baby Girl eats. But it's working out and all 3 are still alive. YAY! I thank Nanna everyday. She is invaluable.
Posts
4 comments:
Wonderful story and yeah for Nanah! We had goats in Texas a while back, the babies were so fun but as you say, sometimes demanding when they had to be bottle fed. Good luck with the new babies!
Thanks for visiting my blog! I like your baby goats...I usually have twins. My publicist bottle fed my last two kids and Michael the goat does tend to think she is his mother. He will attack anyone that comes near her; which is good with strangers but bad when it is the male person :)
Oh wow. Cool story! Isn't it funny what we do to keep them alive? Love the pics of the little goats too!
A good dairy goat is a very valuable animal to have on the farm. I would rather not have bottle babies, yes they are adorable and cute but without a good dairy goat they are expensive to feed. Congrats on the new goat, she sounds like a good one!
Post a Comment