My Life And Goats

Not born in a barn… but I live in one??

It’s too bad Vixen ended up being so over the top mean to other goats and people, she’s really the body type and growth I’m looking for in a goat’s first year. I hope I can find someone who could benefit from her, if not she might end up in the freezer this fall unfortunately. I like the direction I’m headed better, but it’s still hard to let go of my first little success in cross breeding.

For those who are curious, I can’t justify keeping a goat that is as aggressive towards other goats as her. She’s not too bad toward people, it’s manageable, but that’s definitely not a plus about her temperament. If she’s always going to be pushing other goats off feeders it makes a productive system far less sustainable. She also doesn’t share shelters with other goats, and when shelter is limited to a calf hutch while brush clearing it just makes every other goat suffer. I can’t have that in the long run.

Both my yearlings had triplets by the way 🙃

The one who’s feeding her babies very well is also not my biggest eater, my other doe rejected one baby and had an udder too sore to feed babies for about a week after birth.

Everything is settled now and all the babies are healthy, though Fiadh (white mom in the first picture) is becoming a spiny lady despite a lot of feed. She should recover with a little more time, she’s doing well otherwise, I just wish she would prefer my pellets over her alfalfa hay sometimes haha.

I’m culling Vixen this year because of some temperament problems she has, rejecting a baby and not feeding the ones she bonded with for awhile is just another thing on the list. She is aggressive toward other goats and some people and I can’t have that continue in my herd. I’m hoping to find her a home with someone looking for a goat in milk once her babies are mature enough to be without her, but if not she’ll live out the summer here and be a freezer goat before winter.

Fiadh has two doelings and a buckling, one of the doelings is a runt (brown and white with short ears in picture 7) that I offer the bottle to when I feed Vixen’s rejected boy, but she much prefers her mom haha. The white doeling with the floppy ears is probably the one staying here (picture 5), but it’s so hard to tell their true genetic quality so young. I have the short eared doeling and all the bucklings listed for sale, though I don’t think I’ll see much traction in their sale until they’re sizable weanlings. The worst case would be having to take the bucklings to a sale barn because I don’t need to be processing all these goats for me, I won’t make money that way but I should at least break even that way. They’ll be castrated if they go too because I don’t like the idea of people buying a breeding buck from an auction, and I don’t believe any of my goats are proven enough to be good breeding buck candidates. Anyway, hopefully that won’t happen that way, but at least there’s a plan.

Rotational grazing has started, they’re moving every couple days to a new area with the net fencing. Not much growth yet, so I’m using areas that don’t have much anyway just to get them outside. I moved them a fair distance the last move and it was chaos, the kids are just so easily distracted lol. I’m opting for more shorter range moves until they can follow on a leash. At least they’re all pretty catchable, at least not afraid of people, and (knock on wood) electric fence trained.

It’s nice having them always on clean pasture or brush too. I can worry less about increasing their parasite loads (barber pole worm is a big killer in goats). It’ll never be enough to feed goats that I want to get to a certain weight or maintain lactation, but it is a huge part of their nutrition. And maybe someday my goats will be bred to be efficient enough creatures to produce on just local pasture, we’ll see I guess.

I don’t have bad acne, but it probably took me longer than necessary to accept because I thought I had it because I was doing something wrong.

Sure, some lifestyle habits can definitely contribute to be getting more or less pimples, but sometimes I still get a few no matter what. And oh well? There’s not a lot I can really do aside from what I should be doing anyway, like balanced diet things and sleep hygiene.

Casual first freshener udder picture again.

Fiadh gettin’ that first year udder ❤️