Scales!

I need some opinions on scales for weighing the kids. I would like to get some that are fairly accurate to the ounce for the newborns, without spending a lot on them right now. Anybody have a recommendation? 

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  • You're welcome! This post brings back memories. I'm sad to say that my old human baby scale bit the dust and is no longer with us. Now the barn has its very own digital scale that we use for kids the first couple of weeks. Once they get too big for that, we move to using the dairy scale with a 5-gallon bucket hanging from it. My husband destroyed a couple of good canvas shopping bags putting kids in them! The sewn seams on them are no match for little hooves! 

  • Thanking you, Margaret and Deborah, for your almost-9-year-old Q&A. I'm finally going to buy a scale after having borrowed my neighbor's digital kitchen scale each kidding season for the last 4 years! (Fortunately, he loves our goats and almost never needs the scale--and I always return it with fresh batteries and cleaner than it was!)

  • Oh that is such a coincidence. I love this forum. I just a few minutes ago remembered about an old baby scale that I rescued from some old folks yard sale stuff my mom had a while back. I had sent one of my kids to tuck it upstairs in my storage barn just cause I love old stuff like that. So anyways, I got one of my boys to hand it down to me and my youngest (11)  boy and I weighed a bunch of cans etc. He had a blast with it and it seems fairly accurate so I think we will use it for the kids like you said, it can be single purpose and where needed. I am just tickled about that. We will have to get our dairy scales etc. later when needed.That big doe is still going at somewhere around day 144. Or maybe a month or even two away but I don't see it being very long.

  • I have two methods of weighing kids -- my dairy scale and my digital kitchen scale. The dairy scale is a hanging scale that it normally in my milking parlor. It weighs to the tenth of a pound and is what's required for DHI, if you ever plan to get on that. I stick the kids in a tote bag and hang 'em up. I've had it for 6-7 years, and I think it cost about $40 when I bought it. My digital kitchen scale weights in pounds and ounces, and I use it for soapmaking, canning, and weighing wool roving or yarn to sell. They run about $20 at discount stores like Wal-Mart and last about three years. I put them in a bowl and sit them on the scale.

    Oh, and I almost forgot! I just found the baby scale that I bought when my first baby was born 25 years ago! And I've been using that lately. I actually love using it because it's super easy to calibrate with a feed pan on it, so that it reads zero, and it's bigger than the kitchen scale. Also, it has only one purpose, so it's always in the kidding barn now, so it's convenient.

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