Not enough goats for milking plan!!

[QoTL]

Hoping maybe someone can give me some really clever ideas


I had two pregnant does. One doe was for milk, the other doe was her companion. My original plan was to seperate kids into a seperate area at night, milk my girl in the morning, then put everyone back together.

Life happens, and now I have one milk doe and one doeling. That's it.

So... Mom is either very overbearing with her youngster or has awful seperation anxiety (I'm leaning toward the latter). If baby is sleeping in a corner, and mom wanders off for hay, mom panics when she realizes baby isn't RIGHT THERE.

Obviously with only 2, I can't make mom sleep alone, and I can't make baby sleep alone (well, I could, but they both would be miserable and I don't think that's very fair to either one.). They are all each other has right now.

I've hinted to my dh that another goat companion would be nice... he ain't up for it at ALL.

Is there any hope of getting milk from mom this year? It doesn't have to be a ton, but SOME would be nice. Since she only has a single, could I try milking anyway, since her baby would put less demand on her? Right now baby is one week old, so I don't think I've missed any window of opportunity there. I have milked her a tiny bit, just enough so she gets used to me doing it. She's a FF and I'm a newbie, so we're both on a learning curve here.

Anyone have some clever ideas for me?


Meghan

[jil101ca]

I too am new to goats. I also have a FF with a month old doeling. I milk her twice a day. She doesn't give me much in the evening but I take what she has to offer. Baby is doing very well and Mom has a bit more milk each day for me.

[walley5]

You may be able to separate them successfully if you can put them where they are close and can see each other, but baby can't nurse. Maybe a stall with 2 fence panels, etc? It might be better to wait until the baby is a little older though...

[billooo2]

You can still milk her twice/day.......in fact, I would recommend it. Her milk production shlould graduslly increase over the first couple months. If you don't milk her, then she will only produce enough for her baby.

[hoofinitnorth]

I agree with the suggestions to milk mom. Just keep an eye on the kid and make sure mom is still producing enough to feed her and give you milk (she should increase, as billooo2 mentioned).

I have 4 does in milk right now, with 12 kids between them (2 sets of quads, 2 sets of twins). I am milking all four at least once daily weekdays and twice daily weekends. I'm not getting a ton of milk right now, just because moms don't want to let much down for me. I'm not pushing the issue since the kids are only about 3 weeks old now and they are feeding a lot of them and I'm mostly getting them on the stand to inspect udders, feed grain, check overall health, etc. I will probably pull kids during the day once this weekend (bottle feeding as necessary) just to see how the udders look when they are truly full. Maybe we will even do milk test this weekend.

[Tallabred]

When I first got my does with doelings at their sides I tried separating them at night. OMG you would have thought that the world was coming to an end. I gave up on that, we live above our barn and the goats were waking everyone up, I ended up getting enough milk to drink and to make cheese.

Start milking her and she will start to produce more.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Put baby in a dog crate in the pen with Mom. Together enough.