Weaning a goat
Punkin got his followup
CD&T injection this week, which means he's now ready to become the
stud at a nearby friend's farm. We're 
just
waiting on that friend to recover from eye surgery so he can take on
the handful that is our 11.5-week old buckling.
(No, Punkin, the mineral
feeders were not intended to be eaten out of in that manner.)
Punkin is the first goat
I've ever weaned, and after watching him I'd say that eight weeks old
probably is too young to go off milk for
most goats. Our buckling came out of his weaning at a perfect, svelte
3.0 on the body-condition
chart...but that's
only because he began with rolls of fat around his shoulders and
because I let him nurse at slowly lengthening intervals for the first
two weeks. A skinnier goat or the recipient of a cold-turkey weaning
would have had a much harder time making the transition to grass.
In the meantime, Punkin
has gotten used to being in a neighboring pasture rather than being a
true member of the herd, and he seems even more affectionate toward
humans as a result of his ostracism from goat-kind. In fact, he's the
most dog-like goat I've ever met. He definitely inherited all of
Artemesia's sweetness and added a level of charm all his own.
In other words ---
Punkin's new owner had better pick him up soon before Mark and I fall
any further in love!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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