Today we volunteered to babysit three bottle baby goats for a friend and his wife. They both have to work full time and the babies need feedings three times a day (really four). So J and I went over and picked up the cuties...a doeling and two bucklings.
Our friend has a herd of about 200 boer goats. He raises them almost exclusively to sell for meat...which raises a few concerns for us because he doesn't test his goats for CAE or CL. But in talking with him about the health history of his goats, looking at them ourselves, and really talking about how the diseases are transmitted, we decided we could take the chance. He uses whole milk from Costco to bottle feed...a little different but cost effective for meat babies.
We brought the three babies into the house at first, putting them in a baby playpen for a few days. The youngest was only 2 days old and we felt like it was too cold for them outside. One of the bucklings really caught my eye. He had a nice blocky head and really stout legs. He was pretty sleepy most of the time, but seemed to have a healthy appetite.
After a couple of days, we decided to buy the bigger buckling for our herdsire. We had the vet come out to disbud him...mainly because we don't have the tools and wanted to make sure it was done correctly this time. Well, the buckling had pneumonia. As did the other buckling. So, they both got shots of LA-200 and we decided to wait on the disbudding. They should be doing better in a few days and we will have the vet out again next week to help with the disbudding.
No comments:
Post a Comment