Goat farmers Gerry and Aletha Wilmot aren’t kidding when they say they have a lot of mouths to feed — so they’ve come up with an ingenious device to do the job for them. A wooden contraption specially made for them by a carpenter on the Island is allowing them to feed 13 kids at the same time, while they get on with other work at their Warwick farm. Mrs Wilmot told The Royal Gazette: “It was my idea to have a trough made up with holes in it for the bottles to fit. We had it built just the other day because we were bombarded with 13 goats. “It’s made up in sections and the bottle is slanted so the milk can come down for the goats.” Wilmot Farm, on Cedar Hill, Warwick, has between 40 and 50 adult goats. Mrs Wilmot said there were various reasons why the 13 kids couldn’t nurse with their mothers, such as sore udders and mastitis, where the milk doesn’t flow. Instead, she and her husband fill 13 bottles with a formula called goat kid milk replacer, slot the bottles in the holes and leave the rest to gravity. “It’s easier than to have a human there feeding 13 goats,” she said. “It’s easy feeding!”

Akil Simmons