Whose Your Daddy?

That is what I would like to know, but their mom Cookie isn't telling. These cute two new baby goats was born this past week, one doeling and one buckling. Cookie knows we are big believers in planned parent hood on the goat farm. Pairings of each doe with a buck is planned in advance and when the doe comes in heat she is either pen bred or only one buck is ran with his chosen girlfriends for that breeding season. Since most of our goats are registered we must know with absolute certainty who the sire is. The other reason is to plan when those babies will be born so as to hopefully avoid freezing weather or to plan for certain times of the year when the market for goats is better than others.

We haven't had a doe bred on our place who we didn't at least know who the sire was until about a month ago when we had the does up in the working pens and I happened to notice Cookie's udder looked quite large. I looked closer and sure enough..."Cookie, you little tart!" I couldn't help but say out loud when I realized she was less than a month for sure from kidding and that those kids would be due in December. Luckily the weather this year has not been nearly as bad as last year but still darn cold enough at night that I did move her to a room in the old shop/farm house so the kids would not be born out in the cold.

Based on what group of goats Cookie was with at the time and looking back on the calender for when Cookie must have had her secret rendezvous told me what happened but not exactly who their father was. One of the young Boer bucklings in the doe pasture last summer must have had a secret May-December romance with Cookie right before we got them moved to the weaning pen. It is a good lesson to make sure those intact buck kids are either castrated or weaned by 10-12 weeks old because some can mature quite quickly. They might not have been planned but they are adorable kids. Cookie seems quite pleased with them and we are as well.