bottle baby with the herd?

[rlatta]

We have a lamancha/boer mix buck that has been bottle fed from birth.
He is about 3 weeks old now. We are wondering when he can be placed with the herd without fear of him nursing on one of our milk goats.
He shouts at us when we walk out of the house.

[debitaber]

IT will be a long time, he can't go with the herd, until he is big enough to defend himself.

[animal_kingdom]

sorry to give opposite advice...but...

I have my bottle baby in with the herd. He's around a month old now and since there are other babies, he seems fine.

I do have one nanny that didn't get bred this year and she seems to be everyone's "Auntie". They just love her and she tolerates them well. She's a Nubian and the rest are boer/boer crosses.

Maybe that's why it works out, because of her kind of being there for all the babies.

[livestockmom]

We also have all 14 of our bottle babies out with the herd when they are strong enough to be out of the house ( cribs ) we harden them to the weather in stalls in the barn for two nights and then out to the herd when they are 10 or so days old... you can't tell any difference, except when they all come running off the pastures for their bottles evey 4 hours! They also have a creep area they can get free choice food and moms can't get in - they all seem to sleep together in there, we bed that heavy with straw for warmth.

[Freeholder]

If your goats are on pasture, with plenty of room for the babies to get away from any big goats who try to bully them, they could go out now. Bottle babies won't usually try to nurse on the goats, as they don't know that is where milk comes from (I have had one figure it out, in over twenty years of keeping goats). My goats are in small pens as I don't have any pasture, and I started putting my this-year's kids out with the does when they were about three weeks old, just during the day and in good weather (in case the does wouldn't let them in the shelter when it was raining or snowing). I keep a close eye on things, and after some initial shoving, the babies have been accepted. They still go back in the baby pen at night, and will until they are weaned. (Actually, I hope to have these two girls sold by then.)

Kathleen