Well, I promised I’d explain our progress and offer another video or two, so here we go. The buck kids will be four weeks old tomorrow. They are growing so fast, and things are seeming more “normal” every day.
But first…
The Rabbit
This is Thumper.
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| Thumper |
Daughter A. bought Thumper a few weeks ago. Anyone who asked her what she wanted for her birthday back in February was told “money to buy a rabbit” and what she meant was to buy a cage and other supplies because rabbits over at the local charter school are only five bucks.
That is, unless the first one dies. Then you have to pay another five bucks, which makes the rabbit seem like a ten dollar rabbit. {Ask me how I know.}
Thumper is a good little baby bunny. He tamed up quickly. He escaped from his cage once, but he let us catch him, so we forgave him his trespass.
Every single day, Thumper pretends to die in the heat so that he can come inside. I think he likes having the girls cry over him. I have always had a no-animals-in-the-house-regardless-of-circumstances rule, but since we’ve lost a number of pets this year, I got all soft and now there is a rabbit in my dining room more often than not.
Milking
I’ve modified the milking routine to something that works better for the whole family. I initially was milking at 7pm, but found that left me no time for reading aloud in the evenings and, after a week or two of that, I was ready to throw in the towel. So now I milk around 5pm {and around 5:45am}, even though that means dinner is sometimes thrown off. It works better and, strangely enough, Reece gives more milk at that time.
This means that I lock the babies away from Reece around 2pm. They basically lay down right outside the cage so that they can always see her and cry at her when they think about nursing.
And then they practice their fighting skills.
Wesley
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| Wesley |
Baby Bucks
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| See Rusty’s Tiny Horns? |
Baby goats are born without horns. Some folks choose to dehorn them, which has to be done very soon because the horns begin growing in almost immediately.
We started out with horned goats. Once we learned how to handle them, we were comfortable with horns and decided to just let them be. One of my books said it is dangerous to breed two polled {dehorned} goats together because of possible birth defects, but the breeder we purchased Reece from was moving to all polled goats {maybe he meant all polled does and I misunderstood?}, and I assume he knows what he is doing because he’s been doing it a long time. Honestly, a bit of this was just a practical decision. We didn’t own anything for dehorning and decided not to invest the time and money in figuring it all out. Besides, most bucks in this city seem to have horns.
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| Reece and Dusty |
Sorry if the videos are a little wobbly. Wesley kept nibbling on my pants! I know some of you are showing these to your children, so I thought I’d give a full report.
2 Comments
Love the video and the update! Thanks!
Y’know, I’m not a vegetarian, but those goats are SOOOOOO cute I just couldn’t eat them. I’m afraid that if/when I start getting closer to the sources of my food, eliminating the middle man more and more, I may go hungry. :/
My kids and I really enjoyed the videos. Thank you.