4.16.2010

baby goats

Of our four goat babies, 2 nurse from their mother Rain, and 2 we have to bottle-feed. Our goat Windy births and cleans her babies and lets them nurse for a little bit, and then completely rejects them. (Supposedly she does this because she was bottle-fed herself.) So, we milk Windy, and then feed the babies her milk in a bottle. The first 2 weeks we fed them every 6 hours, and just yesterday (they are 2 weeks now) we cut back to feeding them 2 times a day. At this point they will start to eat grain and foliage as well as the milk. As troublesome as it was to get up at midnight to feed them, the bottle-fed babies are incredibly friendly because we are their surrogate parents. Every time we walk out of our house they run the the fence and start crying out. Lili puts on her boots and walks up there several times a day to see the babies and talk to them. Pretty much her conversation with them consists of her saying "Hi Goaties!" over and over...


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