Help with Stunted Kids

[natybear]

Okay, we have nubians and last year we had 3 doelings that never grew beyond what a 3 month-5month old looks like in weight and height. I don't know what happened. We are CAE and CL free & G6S-negative with all of our animals. We worm when needed and give CDT shots. It looks like we are going to have the same problem this year and I'm freaking out.

What is wrong? We have Cherry trees and they eat the leaves, I know they have cyanide in them but I don't think that's it. Everyone gets plenty of feed and water. They are active and play hard. They just all look like runts. Is it because we are bottle feeding, because we've always done that and last year was the first time we had this problem. DO you know what we might be difficient in?

How do I get my goats to grow? What's wrong??? Can anyone help us?

Suggestions would be wonderful.

[bumpus]

.
If you changed billies to breed with, he might have a small gene in his ancestory.

You may have to change billies.

bumpus
.

[GoatsRus]

I know you said you worm when needed, but keep in mind that coccidiosis stunts their growth if not taken care of when they are babies. I had a little doe given to me that was considered the runt. We had never owned a goat before. She was extremely small (newborn size) and was about 4 months old. She ate good and seemed to be OK- and yes we wormed her. We found out later that coccidiosis stunted her growth and she ended up dieing a few months after we had her.

[Ark]

Coccidiosis?
Oh, GoatsRUs beat me to it - LOL.
We have had this problem in years past with some Boer kids. I hate to feed a medicated feed, but where we live cocci is a BIG problem so we have to do it.

[susanne]

worming when needed? how do you decide they need it now? do you have fecal checks done? what wormer do you use? is your wormer still effective?
what do you feed your kids? do you do cocci prevention?

here kids are raised on goats milk, three bottles a day till three month old.
after that they get two bottles per day. sometimes i supplement with store bought cows milk. every kids is on cocci prevention with sporadic fecal check once a week (one or two samples each time from a different kid) they have free choice alfa pellets mixed with boss and of course a loose mineral salt, right now sweet lix meat maker.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Are you dealing with the huge copper defficency problem you have living in the pacific northwest? You also might want to try kidding out much earlier in the year so you don't have the obvious parasite issues and cocci problems you likely have. Living where you have freezes you are overwintering these problems in your barn pack or your goats themselves so your fall worming is not working.

Most of Susannes questions is what I would ask also.

Plus are you breeding a speicfic bloodline? Is it too linebred perhaps?

Also kid management is huge, not only the parasite issue. What are some normal kid weights right now on your farm? Months old and weigh taping what? What did your 8 months olds wiegh last year. Did you breed them or do you have dry yearlings and what are their weights now as yearlings? Vicki