Goat Stress
Posted on July 4, 2009 - Filed Under animals, babies, donkey, farm maintenance, goats, names, this sucks!
I don’t know who is more traumatized at this point…us or the goats? I realized I hadn’t yet related this story probably because I was just so over it. But in memoriam, and to keep a healthy mind and heart, here goes.
Goats are actually pretty hearty and independent creatures. The only real problems we’ve had: 1) keeping them penned in (they are constantly breaking the fencelines…as a matter of fact, right now, several of our goats are grazing happily in the woods) and 2) our baby goat survival rate is going down.
Our baby goat mortality rate was good for a while. We’d lose one here or there: too weak, malformed, trampled. Sad, but understandable. This past year though, we lost 4-5. Sad, and not easily acceptable. 3 of those were right on top of each other which made it even harder to deal with.
Our Spanish goats go into heat 2-3 time every year. Seriously, that’s a lot. And each goat mom generally births 1-2 babies. Well, a few months ago, we had 2 moms pregnant at the same time. One a new mom who birthed two. One an old hand who birthed 3 (unheard of). And each gave birth within a day of each other.
Old hand, Big Momma, was first. I was there to watch. First one, huge! Then another, much smaller, but still good size. But wait! Another, but still born. I took away the the last, not living baby. It was perfectly formed, but there was no way 3 goats from 1 mom were going to survive. The other two were fine. One had normal coloring for our goats: tan body, white splotch on the head, white slash on the leg. The other was like a patchwork quilt with white, black and tan splotches and stripes. Jett named it Multi (for multi-colored).
Next day, new mom, Topsy gives birth to one just fine and a second who look albino. It had very little fur, was very long and lanky, and weak. For 3 days and nights, I hand bottle-fed this one. But to no avail. All that work and she didn’t make it. Two gone.
The weird thing was, Big Momma still thought she had 3 babies. And to a bit of distress to Topsy and me, she basically stole Topsy’s baby. I guess ‘cuz they were born so soon together and the smells were new and similar since they were in the same shed. Thankfully, Topsy didn’t get to bent out of whack and the little “stolen” baby split her feeding time between the two for a while. But Momma definitely considered all 3 hers and made it known.
Then Sonic the dang donkey trampled #3. I cannot express how infuriating that was. And of course, it was the cool, multi-colored baby. Donkey and goats are now separated, especially when babies are involved. And here, I thought just the horses were dangerous to the baby goats. Ha! Farm life sucks sometimes.
The other 2 are thankfully healthy and happy. Now we just have to give them proper names. A picture is included in the post, below, if you would like to make suggestions in the comments.
New farm rule: never name the babies until they make it past their 2 month birthday.
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