A Big Loss On The Homestead

In the months of January and February, we had some really cold days/nights.  Too cold for new borns to be out in the weather.  We ended up with 6 bottle babies, after having so many losses.  We just didn't want to go through all of the losses again.  It was a great learning experience for us.  Since we live 20 minutes away from where we keep the herd, it was really nice to be able to look out our back window and see the little goats.  After about 6-7 weeks, we had decided to bring home one more male goat.  He was 6 weeks old and doing well, but we wanted him tamed so that we could keep him to breed.  Just look at him...isn't he a beauty??

Anyway, fast-forward a few more weeks.  It's time to take the babies back out into the field.  We felt Choco (our beautiful buck pictured on the right) needed a little more time to get use to us.  So we left him and 2 other males behind.  We took the other 4, 2 bucks and 2 does out to the field.  They were quite a bit smaller than most of the other babies we had out in the field.  That mother's milk just makes them so much bigger!  The herd didn't quite accept them and pushed them around a bit if they got in the way, which was to be expected.  It was hard to leave them there, for a couple of reasons.  One, we didn't want to leave them.  We had grown used to having them at home with us. And two, because they tried to follow us out of the fence.  Since they are so small, they slipped right through without being shocked.

By afternoon, when it was time to feed the goats, all 4 of the babies were accounted for, but still weren't really merging with the herd.  When morning came and the goats were fed, we were missing one of the babies.  To make matters worse, it was one of the does we had.  Her name was Girlie.  We had nursed her through pink eye and bottle fed her most of her life.  She was super sweet and had really cute floppy ears.  To say we were sad is an understatement.  

We looked for her a few different times that day.  At one point all 4 of us were out there searching the woods and calling for her. We found no trace of her anywhere.  That night before my son came home, he was being followed by the remaining 3 babies.  He watched 2 of them go through the fence, following him to his car.  At that point we decided to just bring them back home.  

So now, here we are with 6 goats in our yard again.  Still missing Girlie, but not wanting to take a chance on loosing the others.  We are in planning mode to try to figure out how to get these 6 out in the field and keep them safe.