Kid videos

People enjoy watching our baby goats! Today was the first day in the nearly two weeks since the kids were born that we haven’t had some people come to enjoy them.

So for those who aren’t able to make a quick trip to the farm to see for yourself, here are a couple of little videos. Nothing spectacular, just little kids doing their thing!

It is amazing that less than two weeks ago these little ones were learning to walk on wobbly little legs and learning to nurse from their nannies. Now they are bouncing around and learning to eat hay.

The platform on which they are playing is the overturned pig trough. We probably won’t be getting new piglets for about a month or so and the kids need something on which to climb and play so the pig trough was put to use. They now go outside and play on the rocks but I haven’t been able to get a good video of that yet. Hopefully I will be able to do so and post it in the next week or two.

In the second video, the little kid who is looking down into the blue container near the end is a bit of a sad story. She is a delightful little doeling but her mother (a first time mom) does not want to let her nurse. She lets the other twin nurse but not this one so the neglected little one constantly trails after her, trying to get a bit to eat but the mother shakes her off. Other nannies give her a kick or head butt when she tries to steal milk from them. So, three or four times a day I hold the mother and make her let the little one nurse as much as she can get. Much better to have real mother’s milk than being bottle fed. Also, we understand that bottle fed ones think that they are people and will do anything to get to their human family, including bleating constantly, breaking fences and otherwise making nuisances of themselves.

Yesterday I learned from a sheep-raising friend at church that some lambs have such sharp teeth that their nursing hurts the mother. So farmers file the extra sharp edges off their teeth. So I tried doing some filing on the little one last night but it didn’t seem to make much difference. However, this afternoon, I was delighted to see the neglected little one nursing alongside her sister for a little while. I will still go out tonight and hold the mother to let her nurse but maybe things are looking up for her.