Weaning the kids

Clover, Rowan and Willow are three months old nest week. They are eating as much concentrate as I care to give them, hay and grass. This means that their rumens  are fully functioning so they don't need their mother's milk. Since they were four weeks old they have been separated from their Mums at night and the Mums were milked each morning. From tomorrow its back to twice daily milking.

They will have to be kept quite separate now so they are penned in a corner of the sheep house. Sfter a few days they'll be turned out to graze but in a separate field from the does. I don't want them to start suckiling again.

The next job is to label them with one ear tag and one pastern tag on a hind leg. Each tag has our unique herd number and a unique number for the goat. This is too ensure traceability after the last Foot and Mouth epidemic in 2001. Each animal must have two separate identifiers; tags or tag and pastern tag, or tag and tattoo. Its EU rules!