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Looking for information about birthing complications in goats

924 views 9 replies 5 participants last post by  MaggieJ 
#1 ·
Hi folks! I'm looking for information about birth complications in goats for my historical novel. My apologies for the length of this post, but I think knowing the scenario will make it easier.

This is the scenario as I see it at the moment:
- The year is 1894 (mid-April) and the setting is a remote rural homestead in Ontario.
- Sarah's doe has gone into labour (second pregnancy) and it is not going well. Sarah manages (using carbolic soap to disinfect her hands and olive oil for a lubricant) to re-position and deliver one kid - DOA - and then the second, a live birth.
- The doe hemorrhages badly after the placenta is delivered. Sarah has some herbal knowledge but not enough to be confident. She tries shepherd's purse, red raspberry leaf, nettle, yellow dock. It is hard to get the doe to take anything. She tries the old midwife's trick of using a piece of the placenta in the mouth of the doe. What else should she do that a young farm wife would know to try?
- The doe is still bleeding and growing steadily weaker. Eventually she dies. Sarah is stunned, but when she sees the eyes glazing over, she realizes there is nothing more she can do for the doe.
- Sarah turns her attention to the kid. Can the kid suckle a newly dead doe (or perhaps this should come before the doe actually dies) in order to get the colostrum that is so necessary? Could Sarah milk it out?
- Sarah has a second doe that gave birth about three months earlier and is giving a good quantity of milk. The kids are not with her. Would this doe likely let the kid suckle or would it refuse it? Would Sarah have to bottle feed the kid? And if so how could she improvise if she does not have a feeding bottle or nipple?

I've done quite a bit of research on the Internet, including watching several videos of goats giving birth. Still, I'm sure I've missed some things or made "armchair newbie" mistakes which I am hoping you folks can spot and help me troubleshoot. Please remember that Sarah is 21 and still fairly inexperienced; it is not necessary or likely that she would know everything that would be considered "best practices" today. She is simply doing the best she can with what she has available. Any help you can give me will be very much appreciated.
 
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#2 ·
You would milk out the doe and feed the colostrum to the kid for the first 24hrs (or until the colostrum ran out). After that, the kid can have regular milk from any other doe, as the gut would be closed after 24 hours to any additional antibodies. Not that Sarah would know that in 1894. ;)

I don't know what other tricks you'd have as if this doe is hemorrhaging, she likely has a uterine artery tear and there isn't much to do for that even with modern medicine. Usually they bleed out far before veterinary help arrives and honestly, if noticed, you generally try to get out of that uterus and leave it the heck alone in hopes that it clots and they don't die. But, they usually die. :/
 
#3 ·
You would milk out the doe and feed the colostrum to the kid for the first 24hrs (or until the colostrum ran out). After that, the kid can have regular milk from any other doe, as the gut would be closed after 24 hours to any additional antibodies. Not that Sarah would know that in 1894. ;)

I don't know what other tricks you'd have as if this doe is hemorrhaging, she likely has a uterine artery tear and there isn't much to do for that even with modern medicine. Usually they bleed out far before veterinary help arrives and honestly, if noticed, you generally try to get out of that uterus and leave it the heck alone in hopes that it clots and they don't die. But, they usually die. :/
Dona, thank you so much for your helpful reply! I do appreciate you taking the time to provide reliable information so that I can write a realistic scene. Thank goodness it's fiction, eh, and that no actual goats are harmed in the process.

You're right that Sarah would not know that the antibodies could not be absorbed after 24 hours. She just knows that the colostrum is very important. She would try to milk out the colostrum, but as the writer I needed to know if it would be successful. It really bothers me as a reader when an author doesn't know something and doesn't bother to try to find out. Quite frequently, the writer needs to know things that the character does not.

The information about torn uterine artery and hemorrhaging is very helpful as well. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pull off writing this scene now in a realistic and heart-rending way.

Many thanks!
Maggie
 
#4 ·
Unfortunately the other Doe would likely not take the kid. She could borrow a baby bottle from a neighbor? A baby bottle would be fine. Also, unless she is milking the other doe, if the kids aren't with her, her milk will dry up. Hope that helps! Sounds like you've done a lot of research!
 
#5 ·
Thanks, HorseNGoats! Yes, your reply is very helpful. I have done a lot of research (about so many things that have come up while writing this novel) but the input from people with first-hand experience is invaluable for authenticity. I didn't really think the other doe (which is being milked for the family's dairy needs) would take the kid, so it will be bottle-fed.

I'll hang out here with you knowledgeable folks for awhile and read some of the other posts, just to get a better feel for the topic while I deal with this scene and a few to follow. The goats are not a major part of the novel, but Sarah's homesteading efforts are important to the family's health and well-being, and so different aspects of that do pop up in the story from time to time.

Many thanks to both you and Caprice Acres! :)
 
#6 ·
While not the norm, I had a first freshener last season that would let me put kids on her while she was on the milk stand. For some does this is traumatic and not a good idea, but this girl didn't mind at all. It worked well when the kids were newborns, but after about 2 weeks I realized that they were probably getting too much milk at once and switched to bottle feeding. The doe turned out to be a heavy milker. If the kids had been on her all the time she would have regulated the amount they ate. However, she wouldn't let them nurse except when she was on the stand.
The character in your story could do this in her situation. While it's not good for them to be glutted with milk, they could be monitored. What did people use for baby nipples back then? I've never thought about it. I've seen in novels where they save the life of a newborn by dipping a twist of rag in milk and using that as a nipple. I can't imagine that works for long, especially for goat kids. The milk barely comes out of a nipple fast enough once they're a couple of weeks old. Can kids be trained to drink milk from a bucket when they get a little older? I'm curious to see what you come up with.
 
#7 ·
Thanks, Farmer Jayne, :) I'm sure Sarah will give it a try with the other doe on the stand, so it's good to know why this might not work so well a bit later. They certainly had baby bottles and rubber nipples back then, but a set (bottle, nipple, brush) could run up to about 20 cents. Her husband makes a dollar a day at the sawmill and is currently laid up with a broken ankle, so they're very hard up and she'd think twice. (I have the Eaton's Catalogues of the times on DVD, so I checked prices--amazing resource for someone like me!)

People did use a twist of rag in an emergency for human infants and in fact when Sarah was younger she fed a kitten that way, but I think it would take forever with a kid. Someone on my rabbit forum who also has goats suggested using the finger off a leather glove as a nipple. Tied or wired over the lip of a bottle it might work . . . I may mock up one and see if it seems feasible.

I wonder at what age a kid can drink from a bucket? After all, they learn to drink water that way. One more thing to look into. :)
 
#8 ·
Circa 1880s, rubber nipples had been invented. India rubber and would have gotten soft pretty quickly. Infants died often due to lack of sanitation with the nipple and bottle being breeding grounds for bacteria. 1860s recommendation of wash the nipple once a week. Where is the heroines location and was she raised around livestock? City girl wouldn't know much.
 
#10 ·
Thanks so much for replying, cpnkrunch. :)

You're correct, cpnkrunch, that poor sanitation killed a lot of bottle-fed infants! Even a lot of doctors did not understand "germs" back then, though by the 1890s it was getting better. Sarah was not raised on a farm, but by this time she has some experience. She spent her first year in Canada on a farm and then her teen years in the town doctor's home, so she is much more knowledgeable than most young women would be.

Great tip in your second post on getting a freshly kidded doe to accept a foster kid! Filing it away for future reference. :) Unfortunately, she has only the two does and the one that dies is the second to kid; the other kidded a couple of months before.

Sarah at the time I am writing about (1894) is living on a mainly wooded scrub acreage about ten miles from the town of Madoc in Ontario. The surrounding area is mainly farmland by this point -- the major lumbering was finished just there -- but she is not on a farm. She is pursuing various homesteading activities to improve the health and nutrition of her family. Labourers like her husband earn only about a dollar a day.

I would think the circumstances would be similar in many parts of the United States at that time, at least in the partly-settled areas. The first white settlements in her area would have been no more than a hundred years previous to the time I'm writing about and the population would still not be very dense. (I live about 40 miles south of Madoc but my maternal ancestors lived in that area from the mid-1800s, so I do have a feel for the locale.)

Thanks again for your input. It's very helpful and discussing it also helps make me aware of questions the readers may have.
 
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