Vaccination before kidding

[AkHorizon]

I am breeding my does for the first time this year and I just did yearly vaccines. I also read that I should vaccinate the does 30 days before kidding is this mainly to protect the kids when born?

[GoatGirl123]

I have never heard of vaccinating goats while they are pregnant. Usually, what you do is deworm them and vaccinate them the day after they kid, but I'm not very experienced either so I'm not quite sure.

[marusempai]

Yes from what I understand it is to protect the kids - if you give the CDT at thirty days before kidding, the kids will be born with protection. Everybody does it differently though.

[mygoat]

They are not BORN with protection as antibodies to not cross the placenta in ruminants. However, there will be a boost in passive immunity via the colostrum, so long as you get an adequate amount of quality colostrum in the kids before the antibody transport receptors are degraded (12-24hrs... sooner the better!) There are far, far more antibodies in colostrum than just the induced antibodies from vaccination.

I do pre-kidding and pre-breeding work on does. The pre-kidding is about 4 weeks before kids are born. I do BoSe, Copper, vaccinate, and evaluate body condition, eye membranes, and trim hooves if needed. 4-6 weeks pre kidding it's also important to increase the quality of their forages/hay, and I personally start them on a grain ration as well.

[Goat Servant]

Our management is similar to how Dona does it except we do the annual CDT booster & BoSe anywhere from 10 days to two weeks before kidding.

[mygoat]

I may switch it to closer to kidding, myself, for BoSe reasons - may only be 'active' for a couple of weeks at a time, though our feed and minerals also do supply Se as well, so it's less critical for my situation. So long a its not the FIRST time a doe has ever been vaccinated, vaccination up to about a week pre-kidding is probably adequate to boost the immunity. Primary immune stimulation can have a lag time of a few weeks, but secondary exposure (secondary immune stimulation via vaccine as well) is MUCH quicker. If you didn't know the vaccination history of an animal, I would vaccinate a couple times during pregnancy with a KILLED vaccine (never a modified live vaccine during pregnancy). I don't know of any modified live vaccines that we use with goats though, so I guess that's a moot point. :P

[AkHorizon]

Thank you everyone for your response. My does are vaccinated annually and I actually just vaccinated. I plan on breeding them the end of next month as I don't want kids when it is still winterish in Alaska. This is my first time breeding goats so thank you all for your advice.