Our veterinarian Dr. Andrea Mongini was back with us at the weekend to ultrasound all of our yearling "child brides". Like many larger dairy farms, we track the pedigrees of our herd and make an estimate of how many babies we’re expecting and when they’ll arrive.
Andrea and Annie check the tattoo ID on our yearling’s ear
Checking her pregnancy with ultrasound
Just like a human baby ultrasound.
All of our 65 yearlings and 66 mature does are pregnant. If any of the yearlings were not pregnant, we would probably give them to families seeking pet goats. There’s virtually no possibility that they did not have the chance to get pregnant, because bucks introduced to does on heat take their work extremely seriously, barely pausing to eat.
Andrea was enthusiastic about the healthy condition and size of our yearlings, which is great news for their babies and our expanding herd, and the result of Ryan’s hard work over the year. We’ll raise all the babies in the same way as Ryan raised the yearlings, in small groups sorted by age and personality. Each baby will be tattooed on the ear, so that we can track their pedigree over time (they mostly get names, as well as numbers, and yes, Ryan and Annie do know them by name!).