The last couple of weeks have been quite active at Savera Farm's 'goat-osphere'! A few weeks ago, over a span of 2 days, we were glad to welcome 3 deliveries resulting in 4 kids. All the kids were around 3-4 kgs and the delivery process was fairly smooth. Fairly smooth, since we were largely uninvolved - which is not necessarily a good thing. Over time, we would like to better develop our processes to predict and better manage deliveries. With that said, Tellacherry kids unlike Kanni are lactating well which is a huge relief since we had to manually nurture and feed the earlier Kanni kids for several weeks.
A day after the birth, the kids were on their feet and a few
days later, they were strong and confident enough to hop around the cell. For several weeks after birth the does and kids will remain separated from the main herd.
Some kids have to be guided initially before they identify with their mothers.
While other kids get to business right away. Feeding time!
Post delivery, kids need to be cleaned and inspected
Our first set of twins, hoping for several more!
In an hour or two, the newborns start to settle down and the does can become quite protective
With the kiddings steadily becoming the norm at Savera Farms, our foray into goat rearing is steadily moving to the next level. While we are encouraged the flock is increasing, it also comes with added awareness and responsibility. As we acquire experience and develop the needed skills, we constantly work with more experienced operations for advice and best practices. At the moment, we are trying to understand how larger herd operators manage simultaneous kidding of 200-250 does. Feel free to share your advice and readings.
Here are a couple of key metrics we found helpful :
Parameters
|
Range
|
Notes
|
Temperature
|
102.5 - 104
|
Depends on
ambient temperature
|
Pulse rate
|
70 - 80
|
Beats per
minute
|
Respiration
|
15 to 30
|
Per minute
|
Stomach movements
|
1 - 1.5
|
Per minute
|
Puberty
|
7 weeks - 8
months
|
Separate
bucks from does at 2 month
|
Stomach movements
|
1 - 1.5
|
Per minute
|
Estrus/Heat Cycle
|
17 to 23
|
Days
|
Gestation
|
143 to 155
|
Days
|
Life span :
|
||
Does
|
11-12 years
|
Often death
in does is kidding related
|
Bucks
|
8-10 years
|
|
Productive kidding
|
8-10 years
|
For Does
|
Full growth size
|
At 30-33
months
|
Most keep
growing until year 3
|
With the kiddings steadily becoming the norm at Savera Farms, our foray into goat rearing is steadily moving to the next level. While we are encouraged the flock is increasing, it also comes with added awareness and responsibility. As we acquire experience and develop the needed skills, we constantly work with more experienced operations for advice and best practices. At the moment, we are trying to understand how larger herd operators manage simultaneous kidding of 200-250 does. Feel free to share your advice and readings.
I am really impressed by the systematic way each & every thing is Managed here. I am sure this is what each and every Indian Farmer should learn and follow. Of course Uninterrupted Funding is a main hurdle in many projects if it is planned with borrowed funding in India. The most important part of it is Budgeting / Implementing / variance analysis.I am sure you must be doing all these things at SAVERA. Knowing about these records and record keeping systems will be a great learning for the farming community. Thank you very much for making all these things available to the farmers/learners.
ReplyDeleteFarming to a system is a big challenge. But I could see patience and dedication could make it possible. The transformation you had achieved is commendable. As for as feed we are trying with an alternative cost economical cereal based cooked feed, Recipe of it you could check from your neighbours in village. Though I could not yet find any reference about this feed I could visually see the change in our animals for the past three months.Though some are advocating against it I do not find any sustainable alternative to bring down my feed cost.
ReplyDeleteAre you doing hydroponic fodder for your goats ..... there seems to be a simple method to grow it ...... in farnnest website by showvik on november 21, 2012 .....
ReplyDeleteI know a person doing this but dont know what his costs and efforts are .
We are not doing hydroponics fodder yet. There are couple of players who mfg these machines. The process is pretty straight forward with 'ready to eat' fodder in 7-8 days. We may consider this as our herd grows since growing quality fodder during summers can be challenging.
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