she is eating good but her poo is more like big blobs
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She has had a change of home and now a change of food, yep it would give anybody the blobs. What are you feeding her? With her kids at this point growing from the size of small puppies to the 5 to 8 pound kids they will be in 50 days, that takes alot of nutrition, so don't waste a mouthful on fluff. Good hay, a good grain with real products on the tag and give her a handfull of alfalfa pellets several times a day, increasing the amount of alfalfa pellets and grain until by the time she kids she is eating all the alfalfa pellets she wants (2 pounds or so) and 2 pounds (weight it) of grain per day. It's eaiser to get them to eat as much as they need by feeding her breakfast lunch and dinner rather than putting it all out at once. Get a good loose horse or cow mineral, to put out in another bucket in her barn, feed her grain in another bucket, and her hay in a feeder. Lots of warm water this winter, my does love hot water. Pehaps you can move her calcium stores up so she can as an older doe kid for you without problems. But getting the CMPK and propolyn gloycol (nutridrench is just expensive PG with minerals and vitamins in it.
Once a doe has all her adult teeth it's a guess how old she is. If her molars are ground down this can also be from a diet of whole corn, so it's anyones guess. But most of my does kid and milk until at least 12. And all good dairy goats have hips that stick out, just like the difference in looking at a meat cow (angus) and a diary cow (jersey). Feel over her ribs. Is she just skin and ribs? Than yes you need to feed her more, but slowly increase or you will have more blobs (we call it dog poop here
if she has a nice layer of flesh over her ribs but you can still fell the ribs than she is perfect.
Worm her, trim her feet, if you are going to milk her trim or shave up her udder, under her tail and her rearend, this makes keeping her clean so much eaiser. If she is cold than put a sweatshirt on her, they use alot of calories keeping warm. You will also worm her the day she kids so get enough wormer to do that also. What wormer are you going to use?
If you have the money you could also get a bag of black oil sunflower seeds from Wallmart and give her a handful several times a day, they are high in fat, high in rouage (which will help with the plops also) You can also get Probios from a bigger feed store or mill, this is full of beneficial bacteria which is excellent for her rumen, in a pinch you can use keifer or yogurt.
Make sure you milk her when she kids, don't leave a huge colostrum full udder overfilled, once you have seen all the kids nurse, when they are full tummied and laying down together, than milk the colostrum out and freeze it for emergencies. Keep her udder empty once a day until the kids are older and they keep the udder empty themselves. You will have to watch older does with their kids in the beginning, make sure the kids if they are small can nurse off her bigger teats. You may want to get yourself some soda bottles and nipples right now in case you have bottle babies in the middle of the night
Have fun and hopefully 3 colorful doelings are in your New Years future?? Vicki
is that normal that they get so attached to a person?i only got them in november but it was something like love at first seight.
