Hey guys. I have an open air barn and the walls are fence rails with gaps of a couple of inches in between (how they do stuff down here in the tropics)
My barn is an old horse barn with about 10 stalls and I have always used one stall as a milk room and generally kept the kids in the next stall so when I start separating overnight, when moms go up on the milk stand the babies can see her through the wall and everyone is happy.
My herd has kind of outgrown my little operation & I am wanting to turn the old tack room into a nicer milking parlor and convert my current "milk stall" back into a real stall before kidding season. But if I do, this will be the first year moms would go out of sight of babies to be milked.
I am assuming that other people do this- especially you folks way up north...so how does it work? I am envisioning frantic screaming babies and frantic mommies having tantrums on the milk stand.
I can still stall everyone overnight so that moms and babies can see each other through the wall, would just be for the actual milking time that they wouldn't be able to see. Does anyone do this and how does it work for you?
Replies
Oh, yeah! I'm glad you mentioned that. When we start separating regularly after the kids are a couple of months old, the kids do sort themselves automatically into their pen within a few days. It amazes people when they see the goats running in, and the does go in one direction, and the kids go through the little door to the next pen.
Patty Meyer said:
I forgot to mention the kids get their grain in the evening in their night time pen. It only takes a couple of days for them to actually run into the other room and into the pen at night to get their grain, so really they have good feelings about their nighttime pen. :)
I've never had a single kid, so never thought about what I'd do if I did, but I suspect I'd have done what Deborah does and put the kid in a kennel near mom. So far, all of my does have kidded within a week of each other, so there have been plenty of babies to keep each other company.
Yeah, gotcha. My only single last year came at the same time as two other boys so he got to go in the "nursery" with them & they were happy.
I wound up having to put my one doeling by herself overnight because the boys were being inappropriate with her all night long, so I split mom's stall with a goat panel and put her on the other side of it and everyone was cool with that.
When I separate a single kid from the mom, I put them in a dog crate next to mom because they would otherwise be alone, which would be horribly stressful for a kid. When separating multiple kids though, there isn't a problem with them not being able to see mom -- other than they will initially scream more.
Plus once mine are done on the stand they pretty much mill around in the hallway of the barn, and no matter what stall I have the kids in moms would be able to see and almost touch them through the wall while they wait to be let back together.
Juliana Goodwin said:
So...when you separate kids at night they can't see their mom? I've always made it so they could because I thought they had to.
When I begin separating my does and kids at night, the kids go into a separate room in my barn. In the morning, like Deb says, the kids are screaming from the other room, but the does are happy. After each girl has her turn on the stand she may begin to call to her kids, but on the stand there isn't really aver a problem.
I'm not sure how it would be if they could see each other before milking time, and then were taken out of sight at milking time. I suspect that the fact that the does are going to get grain at that time (if you use it, of course) would pretty much make it work out fine as soon as they got used to the routine.
Okay...good to know...I figured that had to be the case because it anyone who didn't live in FL wouldn't have see through walls :)
looks like I am building a new milking parlor then. I am going to pour a cement floor for the barn hall & the tack/feed/milk room. It is dirt floor now and very dusty.
Our goats are always milked out of sight of the kids after they are moved out of the kidding pens, which is anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks after birth. The kids fuss a little, but the does are too busy eating, so they don't care.