Taking this feral goat business a little too far

I've mentioned before that I like that feralness about my goats that helps them survive out in the pasture. The mommas know how to hide their young ones in the brush so they are not easy targets for predators. And somehow the babies know to stay there and be quiet. 

Babies naturally know to stay under logs and in stumps

when mom's not around.

We've all had great does that would go to the far edge of the pasture or in the woods to have her kids. Once they were born, she'd stay there for up to three days bonding with and nourishing her new kids. Then eventually she would rejoin the herd to show off her babies.


I have a lot of nannies that do that each year. I'll see them scattered all over the place at kidding season. I can see from a distance that they have babies, and usually I just leave them alone. I have a few older does that I keep in a pasture that comes right up to the barn. I give them a little feed each day to keep them coming around where I can check on them. One evening recently one of the does didn't show up, so I was sure she had kidded somewhere.


I went walking and found her and two beautiful buck kids on the edge of the woods several hundred yards and two hills away from the barn. She had them cleaned up and they had nursed, so I left them to continue their bonding. The next afternoon, the doe showed up at meal time, but didn't have her kids with her. I wasn't concerned because after she ate, she went back out into the woods. 


She showed up again at meal time on the third day, but this time she didn't go back out. She just hung around the barn and called her babies, but no one responded. Finally I went walking to try and find the buck kids. They weren't along the trail to the barn, so I went all the way to where I had found them on that first day. I finally found a piece of a baby's leg. I'm guessing a coyote made a couple meals out of the buck kids during the few days after they were born.


Which brings me back to a doe's feralness — sometimes being reclusive can be deadly. I was more mad at the doe than I was at the coyote. 1. She should have had them hidden better. 2. She should have been more protective. 3. She could have brought them closer to the barn sooner.


And, of course, I was mad at myself. I could have picked up the kids and toted them home on that first day, but I have kids born far from the barn all the time. Or I could have had more guard dogs in the pasture. (I didn't have any dogs in this pasture because I'm short of good dogs right now and didn't think this little pasture needed an LGD.) Of course I've been thinking that for what those two colored New Zealand Kiko bucks could have sold for in a few months I could have bought two good dogs and fed them for a year. Oh, well, that's part of raising goats in the pasture.