Rebekah may I have your advise

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Rebekah, I have my first doe to kid soon and we plan to dam raise. I was wondering if you would share your milking schedule with me. I wasn't sure if I should milk once a day and do I begin the first day or let the kid(s) have it the first bit then milk? Anyway, I thought some input might be helpful. Thank you! Tricia

-- Tricia Cribbins (cribbins@agalis.net), April 29, 2002

Answers

Tricia, what I have been doing is to let all the kids nurse really well as soon a possible after birth. I squeeze the plugs out of both teats and ry to have each kid nurse on both halves of the udder. Once all the kids are out and doing well, I give the doe a drink of warm water with molasses and cider vinegar- 2 galons water, and 1/4 cup each of the vinegar and molasses. Then I milk the doe at the next milking. If she kids right at milking time, I'll wait several hours.

For the first milking, I take most but not all of the milk, leaving just a little bit for the kids. Next time, I put all the kids on the doe, make sure they all nurse until they are full, and milk her out all the way. In a couple days they learn the routine, the doe calls her kids to come and nurse before I milk her. I used to wait a day before milking the doe out entirely, and the result was udder edema in almost every doe (they were all CAE neagtive). I milk them twice a day, with doe that have triplets, or are nto heavy producers, there may be just a little milk, but the doe still needs to have her udder health checked and to get her grain, it's a good idea to milk out whatever is there.

If there are triplets, and one or more is a buck, I get rid of him within the first month if I can, either eat or sell him. All bucks are disbudded whether they are meat or not, because they are hard on the udders, esp if they have horns. I try to have all the buck kids eaten or sold by the time they are two to two and a half months old. They are prime eating at this age! The reason is that they are much harder on the dam's udder than the doelings, also, I want the doelings to grow well without the meat kids hogging up the milk.

And, one more thing, I disbud early, at a week or so, and then make time to play with the kids, get them to eat grain from my hand, just let them climb on me and sit in my lap. This way they are friendly and don't act too wild. They do not calm down 100% until they freshen, but my dam raised kids will climb right in my lap and nibble on my face. It's what makes goatkeeping worthwhile. :-)

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), April 29, 2002.


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