Milk not coming out of end of teat

[madness]

Hey folks, I haven't posted here much since we finally got goats. I'm not the primary care giver - we have 'farm hands' that live at the farm full time while my family lives in the city. Just a little explanation so in case I sound like I'm a little iffy on the details, well, that's because I am. I'm just trying to gather information.

So, on March 6th about 4 am, our first babies were born to a first freshener French Alpine named Elise. Momma was very good, licked those babies nonstop! Sometime this morning (24 hours later), one of the caretakers became concerned about the milk production (not entirely sure what sparked the concern). She found that there was no milk coming out of the end of the teat. Instead, milk seems to 'seep' through several raised spot where the teat attaches to the udder. Both teats have this and there are several spots, all the way around (i.e. front and back).

Elise's udder hasn't come in fully yet (not quite 2 days from birth) but there is certainly milk in there. It doesn't seem painful for the babies to nurse on her. She seems otherwise very healthy and is behaving like an excellent mother.

Our caretaker called the woman who sold us Elise and she was pretty devastated - even is giving us our money back. The woman is not concerned that the babies aren't getting enough milk because they are behaving normally (they are up playing around, nibbling on everything in sight, and generally being active...and cute). You can see their lips getting milky while working on the teat. We got milk replacer today just in case. The woman's main concern was that the milk seeps out on the back of the teats - meaning if something can come out, something can go in. Since the back of the udder is more exposed to dirt, etc, this is a bad situation.

So....is there a name for this? Is there a chance this can change or that we can do something to help the teat function properly? I realize that none of her kids can be registered and perhaps it's not worth breeding her again. We are wussy vegetarians so she may just end up being a pet if she shouldn't be bred again. We knew we would have to face decisions like this one day, just not on the very first birth!

Any advice is appreciated.


EDIT: I think I found some more info online. Sounds like she has blind teats (no orifice in end) as well as weeping teats (secreting tissue in the wall of the teat, especially at the base). So the weeping part is giving the kids enough milk but the blind part sounds pretty bad...

[madness]

No tips?

The babies are still thriving and I hope they can get enough milk. I don't think there's any hope for Elise as a milker though. Her twin didn't get bred this time around...I wonder if she might have a similar problem!

[ShyAnne]

I have never heard of this. Sorry your having this issue.

[billooo2]

I had a doe with a blind teat.

Another time I had a doe that I could not get milk out of one teat. I took her to the vet. She had a blood clot in the canal. He squeezed VERY hard......and this long stringy clot came out.

He said that some times, a doe will have some bleeding inside the udder when she freshens.

She continued to have slightly "pink" milk for a while, but she was fine.

[madness]

Hmmm. Blood clot in the canal. It's probably worth having a vet take a look at her then. We are sort of at a loss here! And of course, haven't found a good goat vet in the area yet. Guess there's no time like the present!

[Starsmom]

My doe Clarice has to have her teats opened up for her after each freshening. She has very hard, thick plugs and they are hard to see. You have to squeeze and sorta pick to get them out. Sometimes after getting them out, they come back and it takes a couple times. Once done, she milks like a charm. One of her daughters had the same problem, but only had one kid and she developed those bumps and when you would try to milk her, milk would come out of those bumps. It was simply a back up of milk. Once we got her all milked out and kept it up she was fine. We did let her dry up when we sold her kid, but our problem was we needed to keep her milked out. It was messy at first as the milk would come out the bumps instead of the end of the teat. I found that the more I massaged and worked with her the smaller the bumps got, so I kept at it until they went away. She did feed her kid fine and he was thriving.