Haku has been allowed to kiss and lick the baby goat since the day she was born - Christmas Eve, hence her name. We are hoping that doing this will teach him that the baby is a member of the family to be protected, not a prey animal to be chased and eaten.
We have been taking Haku with us to do the animal chores every day, twice a day. Once we learned that it is only the sheep that drives him mad and removed her to the horse pasture, the situation improved greatly. Haku ignores the goats almost completely, and even the chickens only distract him momentarily from the delights of roaming around leashless and free. Now the main issue is getting him to come back to us when we are done with chores! We are working on it.
Christmas is shaping up to be a lovely little doeling. We've decided to keep her. I need a new doe - Iris is old and Flopsy is only half a milker, having lost a teat to mastitis years ago. Since we are keeping her, I decided not to bother disbudding her. Her mom, Polly, has horns and they have never been a problem except once or twice when she got stuck in the fence. I fully expect Christmas to get stuck once or twice too before she learns not to stick her head through. That's okay - not only will we save her major trauma by not dehorning, but in the long run she will be better able to defend herself.
Please enjoy this darling video, and try to ignore my annoying baby-talk.
0 comments:
Post a Comment