Thoughts on feeding kids

I've been toying with the idea of bottle-feeding Granite's kids. While this goes against pretty much everything I believe in IF the doe is healthy (and disease free), the kids are healthy and there is a dam to feed the kids, I have still been considering it.

I bought her at about 12 weeks old. The breeder said she handled both her and her half brother John Henry a lot. Well, I seriously have to wonder what she considered handled because I know how a handled goat acts and neither she nor John Henry have that same level of trust in humans and desire to be around them. She's just plain skiddish and I hate that about her. She has gotten somewhat better over the past couple of months. I don't think I will have a problem at all milking her. I get her into the milk stand every day and her tendencies to want to fly off of it at the drop of a hat are waning. But she still will not allow me to approach her like the other goats, she's wary. Occasionally she'll come up to be but any sudden moves and forget about it. Freedoe is skiddish especially around the children, not so much with me but she's sees me every day and if the kids are around her kids she doesn't have much choice other than to stay. My main goal is to get Freedoe's girls used to us so that this is not a cycle. I can really appreciate goats that have been handled a lot since birth.

That brings me to my point though with Granite. While Granite is fully willing to come to you when you have grain and I can more than likely milk her without a problem, I absolutely do not want her teaching her kids her behavior! Handling a kid is one thing when the dam is fine around you, handling them with their dam is skiddish is somewhat of another thing. When they are tiny and a few days old, it's easy to pick them right up but when they are about 5-6 days old, they can really scoot!

So, I will ponder this for a while more and see if she doesn't come around a little more before she freshens.

Boy am I hoping I get some spotted kids out of her! I was really hoping for spotted kids out of John Henry and while it's still a possibility, he doesn't throw spotted kids 100% of the time which was proven by Chloe and Granite. They seem to lean more towards his white belt around the middle.

Anyway...