[scruffbag]

Its been three months since our goats kidded and the kids stayed with the nannies, i split the kids in to an adjoining pen last week so i could start milking the nannies. Having sold most of the billy kids (still one for sale if anyones interested boer x saanen) i'm wondering how long to keep the nanny kids split from the mums to allow them to wean, you see i hate not letting them all have access to the fields but i dont want tem all to go straight back to the mums.

[Penninehillbilly]

some of mine are just over 3 months, so Im going to start leaving them in a separate pen overnight, but let them run with her in the day, saves me having to milk at nights when I'm busy, and they will wean off naturally, mums seem to decide when.
I think it will be quite a while before you could let them all run together now without youngsters wanting their feed.
depends how much milk YOU want I suppose?

[Lesley Silvester]

Three months is a bit young to not have any milk or will you be bottle feeding the kids?

[scruffbag]

no they'll be getting no milk, we wean based on dietary intake, once they have a high enough intake of creep we will then wean, if i was bottle feeding i would be looking to wean as early as possible normally 6-8 weeks, when they are with mum i give them alittle longer nomally 3 weeks as it seems to take longer for there intake to get to the same level, in future everything will be going to bottle at 4 days old but this year everything clashed a bit and space was at a premium due to delays with planning permission.

[Penninehillbilly]

Good timing this post, last night 2 of the kids were playing up and wouldn't go in their mums pen, so I put some feed in a spare pen & they spent the night in there, I was very surprised at the amount of milk I got this morning, even with not milking her out, leaving some for the kids. I then just turned them all out so they would have had some milk with brekkie.
(I have been taking some off her every couple of days).