Nursing on only one side

[MillsFarmFamily]

What do you do if the new kids are only nursing on one side? One side of her udder and teat still look full, but the other one looks milked, and that is the only one that I have seen them drinking out of. What should I do?

[Laura Workman]

Milk out the side they're not using so the udder doesn't develop unevenly, and so that side is encouraged to produce milk. Do it twice a day. Eventually, if you have more than one kid, they'll use enough milk that just one side will leave them hungry, and they'll learn to use the other side.

After you start separating them from their dam at night so you can milk in the mornings, things will get a lot easier. I do this between three days and a week after kidding. Don't leave any milk for them for "breakfast" and they'll have to use both teats in small sips throughout the morning to earn their breakfast. (Also, if you don't leave milk in the udder, they'll figure that out and be less likely to beat up on your doe competing for those few swallows you've left. Hope that makes sense.)

By the way, separating the kids is MUCH easier on all parties concerned if you can arrange to have the kids where the doe can see and smell them, and they her, but they can't nurse, such as behind a non-solid fence or panel. I built my kid pen with a slatted area of wall adjoining the doe pen for that reason.

[goatkid]

If the doe has more than one kid, I show the babies the full side and encourage them to nurse. If they don't, I milk out the full side. If this is colostrum. I put it in a bottle with the doe's name on it and freeze it. If it is milk, I pasteurize it and feed it to my bottle babies. One year, I had a doe who only had one kid, and that kid nursed only one side. I had another doe who had triplets. I pulled one of the kids off. She refused to drink the bottle, so I put the doe with the single on the stand and let the baby nurse her full side. She eventually would just stand on the floor and feed the baby.

[chamoisee]

If the doe has big teats, you might need to empty the full side enough to make it easy for them to latch onto, and then empty the favorite side completely, every last drop! This is most effective if they've been away from her overnight or even a few hours.

I like to make them nurse off of both sides the first day they are born, but even then they sometimes do develop a preference for one side over the other.

[Goat Freak]

We had the same problem with some of our single babies last year, and the easiest thing to do in my opinion is just to milk the full side out twice every day until the baby/babies get hungrey enough to use both. Good luck with your little ones, bye.

[dosthouhavemilk]

We deal with this with Danielle, a coming seven year old. Her left teat is always larger than the right and harder for the kids to latch onto. I milk out that side once or twice a day until the kids start nursing from it. It gets to large around for the kids to nurse it properly but as they get older it isn't a problem. It is fun for me and she seems to enjoy the extra attention.
We had one doe whose teats were very bulbous. She couldn't nurse her first set of twins (we had to bottle raise them). She could only nurse one of her triplets the net year we bottle fed the other two but she still raised the kids, just couldn't feed them. She was sold the next year because dad said everything on this side of the fence (out) goes, everything in there (inside) stays.....