On Sunday, my husband found 2 nannies and twin bottle goats for sale about 2 hrs away from us. Within an hour he was on the road with the kids to go pick them up (I had to be at work shortly so I missed out on this roadtrip). He came home with all 4 looking very healthy and purchased for a decent price even with gas to get there and back. Each of my 2 youngest children will show one at the county fair this year! They are so excited!! They also gave us a recipe for
homemade "kid" milk.
1 gallon whole milk
1 cup cultured buttermilk
It takes about 3/4 gallon of milk each time we feed, so I have passed on the idea of buying all those gallons of milk and have a bag of goat formula on order at the feed store. I will pick it up this afternoon as well as some bedding for all of them. It will be a lot easier to figure how much to make and not have to make sure I have the ingredients on hand and lots of them!
On Sunday, my husband found 2 nannies and twin bottle goats for sale about 2 hrs away from us. Within an hour he was on the road with the kids to go pick them up (I had to be at work shortly so I missed out on this roadtrip). He came home with all 4 looking very healthy and purchased for a decent price even with gas to get there and back. Each of my 2 youngest children will show one at the county fair this year! They are so excited!! They also gave us a recipe for
homemade "kid" milk.
1 gallon whole milk
1 cup cultured buttermilk
1 can (12oz) evaporated milk
Dump out enough of the gallon to fit the other ingredients. Shake up and serve warm. Using a funnel works really well.
This recipe was working very well. They seemed to love it! Not sure of the breakdown whether it ends up being more or less expensive than powdered goat formula which around here sells for $56/25 lb bag.
We have never had bottle goats before. What a learning experience and how cute they are! I have never seen such young goats. They are so tiny and adorable! We are keeping them in the basement for now. I was told that is about the only place warm enough. We have in the past had bottle lambs in the basement. It seems as though everyone I talk to that has raised either has at one point had the critters in the basement!
Yesterday as I was talking with the local feed store to find out if they had the kind of bottle nipple I wanted and she asked if I wanted any more goats. Well of course I did! There was a farmer in their store at that very moment who had 7 bottle goats he wanted to get rid of! YES -7!! The funny part is that he only lives 2 miles from us. Needless to say, now I have 9 baby goats in my basement!! Seems kinda crazy to me. So I have spent the last 24 hrs feeding goats and then doing it again a few hours later :)
It takes about 3/4 gallon of milk each time we feed, so I have passed on the idea of buying all those gallons of milk and have a bag of goat formula on order at the feed store. I will pick it up this afternoon as well as some bedding for all of them. It will be a lot easier to figure how much to make and not have to make sure I have the ingredients on hand and lots of them!
I have learned a lot the past couple of days about goat kids and their behavior -including but not limited to "bathroom behavior". Boy, do they go a lot!! I did run across an excellent website: www.goatwisdom.com . They have tons of info about everything "goats" you could want to know.
As always, have a great day!
I love to hear that you had your baby kids in your basement. I might be going to pick up a few kids tomorrow and googled raising goats in the basement and your blog came up. We live in SW WI and I don't want to put the poor things outside yet as they are only a week old. So, I'm happy to hear we wouldn't be the only one to do it!
ReplyDeleteI have heard of many people putting various babies in their basement as it's the only place warm enough even with heat lamps in these brutal midwest winters!
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