blind kid

[okiemom]

Hi,

What could cause a kid to be born blind? I had a yearling doe deliver a kid who had an aawful time finding the nipple and getting. Finaly, after a couple of days, it was descovered she was blind. She is now being bottle fed by an adopted mother. I am heartbroken. What could cause this? There was no ouward trama. Could it have been from birthing? I don't think it was too hard, but the mom was new. Any diseases or vit. def? I am at a loss. katharine

[animal_kingdom]

That is so sad. I am so sorry.
Keep us updated if possible about how she comes along. Wish I had advice but never heard of it before.

[Freeholder]

It might have been a deficiency of some kind, though it would likely be hard to track down the source. You could talk to your vet about it, if you have one who is knowledgable about goats. Some years back, when we had sheep as well as goats, we had a lamb born blind, and our neighbors, who bought the same feed we did, had two or three blind lambs. Theirs were valuable, so they did some tracing, and found that the company that made the feed had changed the formulation. We didn't use that feed again, and had no more problems.

Sometimes it might be genetics. A lady I know had a goat kid born blind this year, and she thinks it is the buck she used. She also had a couple of kids with entropion, from the same buck.

Sometimes there's no discernible reason . . . things just happen. I would check into the feed and deficiencies angle, and not repeat the breeding. Hopefully you'll never have this problem again.

Kathleen