Any goat raisers here?

[Gambles]

My boss's son raises goats, nothing too serious, but he probably owns 25-30 of them. My boss and I went to his son's place today and we were greeted by this: The goat managed to have quintuplets. I'm not a goat expert, so I looked up on Wikipedia on the odds of that and it says it's 1 in 100,000 births. They were just born this morning and the white one still had some afterbirth on it when we arrived. All are very small, but alive and were wanting to get a meal off of momma.

 

[WalJohn]

Wowza!!

 

[RBnWA]

She will be a busy moma. Will she have enough milk for that many babies? RB

 

[Gambles]

She will be a busy moma. Will she have enough milk for that many babies? RB

The owner said he will need to buy milk replacer. He said goat milk replacer is expensive.

 

[cjunrau]

Not much experience with goats but sheep. I have seen it with sheep a few times. Usually 1 or 2 will die in the first few days. They seem to be not quite developed. As far as milk, not likely the nanny will have enough milk. And yes milk replacer cost more than the kid is worth. We sell all the bottle lambs for that reason. We try to leave them on mom and bottle feed all of them to help till sold. If they don’t sell they get cows milk after 2 weeks. If they live good if not so be it.

 

[BobTx]

My Grandfather and Father raised registered Angora goats for mohair production. Very seldom had twins but were always a problem to get mama to accept both. The solution was to put all three in a small pen and take a spray can of Right Guard deodorant and apply to mama's nose and the backside and underside of both babies. After three or four days, all was well. BobTx

 

[Texasmark]

May have posted this on here before but I raised Nubians when I first bought this farm....this acreage full of wild sunflowers over you head and lots of erosion, before I could afford cattle. Nubians were pretty animals to me and they had their share of big bags for lots of milk. Had 100% success with that operation and fed the family numerous meals from the "kids". I had an enclosed wire with wood frames and houses I built. What I really would have liked to do was: Detach the wood/wire frame from the ground and make it sturdy enough to drag around the pasture.....when I had something resembling a pasture.....which took awhile to develop. That was my figuring was that when they had grazed the area, I'd just hook onto the frame and drag it around to fresh grass. That never happened.

Another of my boring tales: Earl on in the goat raising episode, I didn't have a pen built and relied on hot wires to contain them out in what was supposed to be digestible pasture. That was a joke. They were smarter than the hot wire. They didn't want to stay in the pasture, they wanted to come up to the house and eat the shrubs, new trees, and flowers in addition to using the cars as their testing of their ability to jump on and off objects.

Before I had Nubians, I had a few of which I don't recall the breed but on one doe in particular....a young "filly" I do recall: To keep the goats from eating up my newly planted trees, I put 3 T posts around a tree and filled them with 4" squared field fencing as tall as I could buy...52" or so comes to mind. On one occasion I happened to be in the front yard where they decided they wanted to graze and a young doe with straight spiked horns got her horns about 5" long got hung up in the wire trying to come out of her attempt to eat one of my new trees. She had worn herself out and was down on her front knees.....only!

Not far away was an "aspiring" young buck grazing. I apparently was watching her trying to get out and witness to the next event, not 20' away: Apparently he was paying more attention to her desperate attempt to get out of the wire than he was with what he was eating.........

To say what happened, without getting this post "Zapped", I'll just say......What transpired over the next several minutes goes contrary to the old Axiom that animals only breed for reproduction!!!!!!!!

I couldn't believe my eyes.