Cinnamonhuskies:

Triplets this afternoon! 2 girls and a boy.

Awesome!  That is so exciting!  Congratulations!!

Cinnamonhuskies:

Now it really feels like spring is coming!

Yep, spring is surely on its way! Wish I could see the babies.  

Baby goats are so cute!  Are the pygmys or larger? Edey

Boer/Nubian cross.

Egads i am so tired.....to bed at 12:30 am and up at 5:45am.....for a few weeks anyway. All 3 are doing much better this morning with their bottles.

I am hoping that the other 2 moms will deliver early too, it helps to have all the kiddos at the same age of development and feeding. Then it looks like a real nursery with a pile of fuzzy babies huddled together under the heat lamp! usually that's where i'll find the cat too. Right now he's perched on top of the chick box on a sheet of blue board insulation. I was throwing him off until I realized he was only there for the chick heat lamps!

ALL DONE!

2 sets triplets, 1 set of twins but 1 of the twins was dead.

We have 6 doelings, 1 buckling which will be our replacement buck next year.

Now if the old goat(doe#1) can recover from mastitus we can back off to milking twice a day like normal. Right now she needs more frequent milk-outs to keep her less full and more comfortable.

I did have to buy 10 lbs of milk replacer at the beginning ($25) because the old momma wasn't dropping enough milk for the babies, but after her daughter(doe#3) kidded she's giving enough for her babies and her mom's(doe#1) too plus milk for the house! We let doe #2 nurse her triplets as we had too difficult a time separating them!

I had the choice between using all the goat milk for babies and then buy the house milk at the grocery store OR buy the milk replacer as a supplement and have fresh milk for the house. Economically I couldn't figure out which was better, but I knew the fresh raw milk was better for us and worth the cost of a supplement.

That's cool. I've never raised goats, but had milk cows and raised calves (one at a time). It's such a thrill to see the little ones doing well. I'm sorry about the one that was lost. Sounds like you had a pretty good crop of babies regardless. 

I was hoping you'd give an update (thanks!).  Was wondering how everything was going.  Sorry about the one twin baby.  Hope the others keep doing good and get strong.  You should post a pic if you can.  : )

I've tried posting pics in the past and it never worked. If someone could tell me how to, I will.

 Super excited congrats!  At times I really miss our goat babies.  We raised Oberhasly's and they looked like little deer.  It was always sad when one died :(   Too busy to add animals currently but thinking about rabbits.   I was a lazy dairy person and only taped up the udders when I wanted some milk for the family, or sepaated them for half a day. Half the milk was enough for us.  

I'm going to have to wean these goat kids early.

The price of replacer has gone from $18 a bag to $30 since last year...so I bought one bag at the beginning in late February and determined not to buy another. At people milk at $3 a gallon on sale and Soy Milk at $2.79 a galf gallon, we've figured if we cut our consumption it's cheaper to buy store milk rather than the replacer, as the goat kids are drinking more than the moms are producing now. (We have an old girl that just dried up completely suddenly...time for her retirement.) So all our goat milk is going into feeding kids.

So I've dropped the kids back to feedings twice a day plus all the grain and hay they'll eat at chore times. (I haven't figured the extra cost of grain yet into all this) Next weekend they will get moved into another pen and weaned off milk altogether. Then we can start keeping some for the house again.

I am considering getting to only one milk goat eventually. Hopefully the feed cost to productivity will be more manageable.

We "got rid of" our extra buck and doe rabbits, so now we are down to just one pair of giant chinchilla bunnies, named Jack and Jill. It made choretime go faster and the rabbit feed last longer. Jill produced an average of 10 to 12 babies a kindling last summer so she can provide whatever we need without the extra medium-sized does that produced about 6 at a time.

My chicks are 2 months old now and I haven't lost any. They look very healthy. Over the next 2 '-3 months we'll weed out the old laying hens in preparation for moving the young birds into the coop.

With the skyrocketing cost of animal feeds, a person just can't keep anything beyond what is necessary.