Day Old Kids Not Eating?

[Croenan]

I've searched the forum and I can't find the answer I am looking for. I am sorry to bother you guys yet again. I have 2, day-old babies with their momma and they don't appear to be eating or at least not eating much.

I did get them to eat twice nicely when they were born, so they could get their colostrum, but I have not seen them eat since then or gotten them to eat. Their bellies don't seem very full at all, but they aren't particularly sluggish.

How else can I tell if they are eating? Momma isn't the greatest, she a first timer and has already snuck away from them and escaped my enclosure, when my back was turned. I had to force her back in. She has deformed teats but they work well and like I said I saw them eat yesterday when they were born. I did notice that they would frequently take the "bad" teat and then give up looking for the good one.

The doe isn't particularly hard and the nipples are soft for the taking, and she does have milk. I really don't want to bottle feed, but I am a little worried about them. BTW...they did poop out lots of gooey bright yellow poop. I know the first poops are supposed to be yellowish green, but I don't remember it being that yellow with my first baby.

Are there any other clues that will tell me if they are eating enough or warning signs to look for if they aren't?

[mpillow]

Watch the kids for regular pooping and peeing.....hold mom still if you have to....the kids will become more aggressive at nursing as time goes by and hopefully mom will get used to it.

add: good mom's also lick/clean butts while babies nurse.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Their butts are sealed shut with the black tarry meconium, so they had to have drank some for them to now have yellow colostrum poop. Make sure you keep their butts clean, they can't eat if they can't poop it out. Babies who are hungry are crying alot, they also suck on each other, then they go quiet, loose their body temp and die. Hold her 3 or 4 times a day and make her nurse them. Those extra teats that are nonfunctioning are the kiss of death to small kids who miss meals because they waste their energy nursing them. As the kids get older they will take their meals from mom unless she really hides from them or is ghastly mean to them, so you have to worry less and less. Plus as they get older, they can take the whole cluster of teats in the mouth. Breeding this trait is horrid, and should be the first thing in your herd your start culling for once you do start having enough stock to cull.

Does with genetic faults like this sadly pass this on to their kids, which will soon give you a whole herd of meat goats that you have to help the dams raise their infants. Not the idea of the low maintence meat goat herd you likely want. Vicki