Weaning Annie (Part I)

It is high time that we wean Annie.  Lots of literature that I read on goats tell you that you want to wean at around 8 weeks old.  Others say not to wean by age but to wean by weight and say that they must weigh 20 pounds before weaning.  Others say that you want to wait to wean until they are not nibbling on grass, but really eating grass.  Annie meets all of those criteria.  She was born in early April, she is very healthy and vivacious and weighs more than 20 pounds and she is eating grass AND drinking Nellie's milk.  As I said, it's past time.

Normally we share the milk with Annie, leaving her together with her momma, Nellie, all day and then separating them at night.  Then we milk Nellie first thing in the morning and then put them back together. When we got back from North Carolina we decided to begin the weaning process by keeping them apart for good.  That means that we'll have to milk Nellie twice a day.  So, we put Annie in the Goat Barn until we could figure out other plans.  Several years ago the kids showed Boer goats in livestock shows and this is the little barn that we built for them to get out of the weather.  It works out good temporarily because it's good to have them where they can see each other.  Here is Nellie checking in on her baby.

My baby wants some milk!

But I wanted to get Annie out on grass as quickly as possible, so when the weekend rolled around, I had Tricia and the kids help me move two hog panels that I had leftover from raising the meat chickens this Spring along with one cattle panel that I borrowed from a neighbor.  I simply used tie wire to wire the panels securely to each other and then to the perimeter fence.  The cattle panel is 50 inches tall by 16 feet in length. The hog panels are 34 inches tall by 16 feet in length.  I think this makes a nice weaning pen.  It provides Annie with grass to eat and is open where Nellie can come by and visit her baby.  It can be moved every other day or so to give her fresh grass to eat.  Once we had the weaning pen set up, we walked her from the goat barn to her new place, picked her up, and placed her in the pen.

"I'm not sure I like my new set-up," says Annie

Annie is a frisky little booger and started running around in her pen.  I started thinking about how to best set up a water trough and how I would stretch a blue tarp diagonally across the top of the pen in order to provide some respite for her from the summer sun.

Testing the boundaries

Annie then started eating grass and it looked like everything was going to be okay.

Glad to be back on grass after two days in the barn

I started walking back to the barn and looked back just in time to see Annie leap the hog panel on the east side of the fence with several inches to spare.  Before I could do anything she was running at me full speed, ears flopping in the wind, happy as a blue bird to be free.

Jail break!

Have I mentioned to you before that goats are trouble?  Goats are trouble.  I quickly caught her and put her back in the barn.  One afternoon this week, I'll walk over to my neighbor's house, hat in hand, and ask if I could borrow two more cattle panels from him.  I'll then replace the hog panels with the two taller cattle panels and see if I can keep Annie inside the pen.

How long will it take to wean?  Well, reports vary.  Some say that it only takes a month.  Some say that you can separate them for 6 months, put them back together and the young goat will start nursing again. Bottom line, it depends upon the goat.  Some momma goats will decide when it's time to wean by kicking them in head when they try to nurse.  I think I'd get the picture!

I'll report back on the weaning process once I've fine tuned the pen.  If at first you don't succeed...