Our Alpine doe, Caramel, freshened Sunday. She had twins, a buck and a doe. The buck is the black and white one. The doe is solid Saneen white as was her sire. The sire came from a well known milking line so hopefully the doe inherited some of that. Caramel had her babies on her own with no problems and both kids are nursing and doing fine. We now have to decide how long to leave the kids nurse. The easiest and fastest way to socialize those kids to humans is to bottle feed them. They soon accept people as mama and usually grow up to be nice friendly goats that do not mind being handled. We have a excess of milk right now so do not need to take any of Caramel's milk for our use and it would be one more item on the daily list of chores. Caramel's pen mate, Cupcake, is due to freshen in a few days also. I guess for now we will just have to allow some time every day to play with the baby goats!
Hi Roger, My name is Laura and we live in the Missouri Ozarks. We raise dairy goats, sheep and camlids. In April, our Alpine Nubian cross doe had tripplets this year. We also have two full Nubian does that each kidded with twins. We are letting all of the dams raise their kids this year. Having had your concern about having goats that were people friendly, we bottle fed our kids last year and have some most friendly does. However, it is difficult to duplicate the feeding schedule of dam raised goats by bottle feeding. So, this year we decided we would let our dams raise their kids and we would get in the pens and socialize with the babies. It is end of May and they call to me and greet me anytime I walk outside and/or near their pens. I am treated to kisses, conversation and a mess of loving up by both dams and kids. It seems it is very possible to have people friendly goats that have been dam raised.
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