A Kidding Tale

[Ernie]

Last Sunday my pregnant Nubian (3 years old now) kidded. I noticed that morning she looked like she was about ready to go, but I didn't isolate her in a stall. I thought it might be a few more days still.

To my surprise when I went out to feed her some hay later that afternoon, she had already kidded in the middle of the barn. There were two kids alive but extremely undersized and shivering to death on the floor. She was paying attention to a third kid who had just been born, apparently stillborn. As best I can tell that one drowned in the womb waiting for the other two to finish up. It was even smaller than the others.

After I removed the dead one she started paying attention to the other two and finished licking them clean. She had already passed (and eaten) the afterbirth. I put her in a stall, gave her some grain and some water (which she consumed readily) and observed the newborns. Both young does. One of them was up and walking around in about an hour, but extremely weak. That one found the teat easily enough on its own, but the other little one just couldn't ever manage to stand. Even four hours later she couldn't stand, so I helped her up and let her nurse.

It was brutally cold, and as best I can tell they were using all of their meager energy reserves to try and stay warm with none left for getting up and eating. I covered the weak one with an old blanket for awhile and then later that night held her up so she could nurse again. After getting two meals down her she seemed to find the strength and started standing on her own, mostly after I helped her up and showed her the teat. Pretty soon she was standing up and walking over to find it on her own.

Now more than halfway through the week, they are both doing fine though the temperatures have dropped again. 14 degrees last night. I don't have blankets or a heater out in the barn but they are snuggling up next to their mama to stay warm at night and burrowing in the deep straw. They're nursing well and mama is taking caring of them just fine. This is her second kidding so she knows the ropes. She does fine normally, but the dead kid threw her off her game. Once it was removed from her presence she got back to the business of mothering.

So, some points to be addressed:

I did not at any time consider bringing these newborns into the house. I've got a farm to run and they aren't worth much money. I need healthy animals and neither myself nor anyone else in my family has the time to be nursing a baby goat for the next 6-8 weeks. It was very important to me that they establish and keep the mother-child bond that will keep them alive. I did not want them bonding to me, nor did I want them to become fragile hothouse flowers. I need strong, healthy goats to continue my breeding program and as harsh as it seems, I had to let them make it or not on their own. At most I was willing to spend half the night out in the barn making sure they were warm out there with blankets and helping them to get started nursing. I'm unwilling to put a heater in the barn due to the risk of fire. The barn and the other livestock are worth more than a DOZEN baby goats.

Why am I posting this? Well, I see a lot of kidding tales being posted on this board and to the newcomer I suspect that they see some of the herculanean efforts we make to keep baby goats alive and might get the wrong impression that it is absolutely necessary in order to raise goats at all. I'm not saying y'all are wrong for doing it, but I want to present to the newcomer that there is an entire spectrum of goat ownership and not all paths lead to goat diapers and sharing your bed with a bottle-fed baby.

Goats are very hardy animals, normally. That's why they are the most common livestock in the world today. They thrive from the alpine mountains to the African desert basin. If you want to be a goat owner, I want you to know that you can do it without all the goats-in-your-bedroom efforts that some goat owners do. It's a good business, and they are a great farm animal with many useful purposes. They can also be lucrative. They are also intelligent creatures that you will get emotionally attached to. Just set your boundaries and stick to them and raising goats can be a worthwhile endeavor.

[Minelson]

Excellent post Ernie...thank you for sharing your experience, insight and style on goat keeping. Even though mine are pets, it is really good to hear how hardy they can be.

[DairyGoatSlave]

thanks for the post and i understand your point of view, id just like to say i plan on rasing mine bottle fed because i dont have special stalls for moms and kids and also i show mine, i dont make a profit, i show my girls as registered lamanchas, i dont want kids to runin the udder they just started to grow and make it all uneven and such, but thats just what im doing.
EDIT- i also have the time to bottle feed, because im just in high school right now, and i olny have five does, two of which will not be kidding this year

[deetu]

Now me, I would have probably tried to revive the third baby if she was still cleaning it. Gave mouth to mouth to a kid once before (yuck, yuck) and it lived.

The other thing I would have done was put little sweaters on the kids because they were so small and it was so cold. I make sweaters out of sleeves of old sweatshirts and sweaters. Wouldn't change the mother's view of them and it would keep them a little warmer. Once they were stronger and warmer, I would remove the sweater during the day. Never had a problem with it.

If I have a bottle baby, it lives down in the barn with the rest of the kids. It learns very fast to stay away from the moms (unless it becomes an opportunity feeder that nurses off any mom until caught) but has the other kids to hang and play with.

Nice post, thanks for sharing. Hope you don't mind me adding.

[chamoisee]

I dam raise too, and hate bottle babies. But I've got to tell ya...when you get weak, preemie, or disadvantaged kids (for example, the weather is very cold even though the kids are big and strong), they need to nurse pronto, whether they can stand or not. By the time they wait four hours, they're really sort of on the losing end of things and aren't likely to gain in strength.

I wonder why they were so small?

[picklespickles]

thanks for posting this. i feel uncomfortable posting sometimes because though i'm a major softie, i'm not a sweater knitter. no offense to those who are, i think some of the posts are very cute and sweet. just it seems hard sometimes to be in the middle. like i went to effort to save a baby recently who didn't make it. i went to more trouble than the average farmer, but then when it died in my arms, ate it for lunch, unlike the average pet owner. lol. i think the one who did survive was meant to by nature, as her mom did not refuse that one. and i was was thankful to the kind one who i made my lunch and then supper for me and a friend from. i'm kind of like my grandma from kentucky was, idealist and pragmatist all in one.

[goatkid]

I think how we choose to deal with our baby goats has to do with the breeds we raise and our goals for our herds. I do bring some of my doelings in the house for a few days before they go to live in the baby pen. I raise and show dairy goats and like the does to be tame. They are much easier for me to deal with. I raise the doelings on pasteurized milk for CAE prevention. I don't want to get attached to the bucklings, so the dams usually raise them. They mostly go for meat. I bring the bottle babies in the house mostly for my convenience. I really don't want to have to go outside in the middle of the night to feed them. Once they are eating enough that they are only fed three times a day, they go outside.

[Lada]

Thank you for posting. We are preparing for our first kidding experience, and I know I will have a diapered goat in my house if need be, I just want this first experience to be positive.

However, I grew up on a farm and I know the business. So, I think in the future I will be a bit more pragmatic about the whole thing.

[thaiblue12]

I too do not believe in heat lamps in the barn, they scare me as a fire risk. Plently of straw is good enough and they grow nice wooly coats.
To me it depends on the goat kid and it's cost. It costs me $50 to bottle feed a kid that I turn around and sell for $150+ dollars and it is worth it. I make more than double it cost me to feed the kid and it takes very little time out of my day.
However when I had a triplet who did not do well I had him put down. Not because of possible time or bottling but because of quality of life. His would have been awful.
I currently have two bottle kids sleeping at my feet. They are new so they are quarrantined ( sp?) away from my main herd and needed to learn to bottle. Since they are blue eyed they will increase the value and sales of my herd.
All depends on the person and the cost of their goats.

[Ernie]

Cost is my major deciding factor for me. Y'all would not believe the herculanean efforts I have gone through to keep a calf alive, or how much I baby my (now grown) cow. A happy cow is a good producer and likely to be far healthier than an unhappy cow. Aside from being the right thing to do, treating your animals with love and respect just makes good business sense.

I'm not entirely sure I can even get $150 for these does. They are neither purebred nor registered and here in northern Illinois the market for goats is pretty slim already. If I knew I could get $150 then it'd be a different kind of kidding tale. I'd probably also raise a lot more goats.

[Goat Servant]

A couple yrs ago a month old buckling came up with entropion. The vet bill didnt cover his worth, but someone had already reserved him. It was a good learning experience.
This year I have one & a half bottle babies out with their dam. I did bring in one for a couple days she was deathly cold. Her sister nurses fine but winds up getting a little of a bottle anyway.
I dont trust heat lamps either. One day old buckling from aother dam never did make any effort to stand. He seemed strong enough visually but just didnt have the will. He expired his first night.

[catdance62]

that was an excellent post. We've never brought a kid in the house, but have helped them stand and nurse until they were strong enough, or the dam got the hang of it (in the case of FFers), usually just 2 days or so. We put splints on Bambi to straighten her retracted tendons and that worked out really well: she is the happiest kid in the bunch so far! Plus she runs around and jumps with all the others. We do put kid coats on the newborns if it is very cold (for here).
I believe in survival of the fittest for the most part. One of my friends who posts here and there on HT has a farm called "Darwin Farm" for that very reason! LOL!