- Thread starter
- #131
Holy cow, that's a lot of GOATS!!! I really appreciate your words of encouragement, thank you!Hey... Oh rats... It is always sad when one doesn't make it. I would suggest though that by and large you have had a successful hatch and it shouldn't deter you from future hatching.
My dad was a great stockman with a really good eye for animal welfare. He passed a huge lot of advice on to me over the years but one thing specifically was his saying... If you have livestock you will have deadstock no matter how well you look after them.
I remember during my first year of breeding dairy goats I pushed so much food into my maiden goats prior to mating that they produced multiple births. I am talking about a kidding percentage of 320%. That meant over 24 does, they averaged 3.2 kids per birth. It was manic. I had exhausted mothers, large kids, difficult births milk fever, udder collapse etc. I was devastated but I learnt from it and because I love my animals I voted I would never put them through something like that again. What I was doing was killing them with kindness.
It didn't deter me and after nearly 30 years I have just recently stopped owning dairy goats.
The point is, e need to accept our losses, learn and carry on. Just because we lose some of our livestock doesn't mean that we lose our compassion.
Have another go!I