Raising Goats Naturally

by Deborah Niemann

  Now I watch my goats. The feeding plan for my bucks changes from one year to the next depending on what their body condition looks like. If they start to lose too much weight, I give them grain. This usually correlates to the quality of the hay and how cold it gets, but their body condition also tends to be worse when they can see the does, because they spend too much time fighting with each other and burning calories. In recent years, I’ve kept my bucks where they can’t see the does, and they don’t spend as much time butting heads. I also buy grass hay pellets to supplement their diet, if the quality of our hay is not excellent. If you need to feed grain to your bucks on a regular basis, add ammonium chloride to their grain or minerals to prevent urinary calculi or feed a brand of goat feed or minerals that already includes ammonium chloride.

  CHAPTER 9

  PREGNANCY

  Breeding a doe is just the first step towards milk, meat, and more, but there is a lot that needs to be done between breeding and that first batch of chèvre.

  Gestation

  The first thing to do after breeding your goat is to mark your calendar with her due date. Goats are normally pregnant for five months, but I mark my calendar for 145 days because they can give birth to perfectly healthy kids a few days earlier, and I don’t want to get surprised. Standard goats can give birth as late as 155 days, but the majority of Nigerians give birth by 150 days.

  Signs of Pregnancy

  Although it is widely accepted that you should stop milking a doe two months before her due date, you will usually see a reduction in milk production by the time a doe is two months pregnant, and she will have mostly dried off by three months. Like everything else with goats, however, this is not absolute. A breeder who had a doe jump off the milk stand one morning, lie down in the barn, and push out a couple of kids now does blood tests to determine whether the does are pregnant.

  Many people wonder when their doe will begin to look pregnant. In most cases, the abdomen won’t look bigger until she is at least three months pregnant, although a few long-bodied does are especially good at hiding kids and may keep you guessing until you see an udder starting to form. My Nigerian doe Coco started to look pregnant by two months both times she was pregnant with quintuplets, and her daughter Vera followed suit twice, as well as our goat Agnes when she was pregnant with five.

  When most people see a doe with a stomach like this, they assume she is pregnant, although this goat is not. This is a dropped abdomen, which is not a sign of illness either. Basically, after having kids for a few years, she has lost her girlish figure. Her abdomen got stretched out one time too many, and it will never regain its original shape.

  The same doe is pregnant in this photo. The difference between a pregnant abdomen and one that has simply lost its shape is that the pregnant one is much higher and fuller.

  False Pregnancy

  It is possible for a doe to get bred and stop cycling and even to get a big belly and develop an udder and appear to be pregnant in every way, yet not be pregnant. “False pregnancy” is used synonymously with “hydrometra,” which simply means water in the uterus. Because the hormones are involved, a blood test shows a false positive. An ultrasound examination is the only foolproof way of determining pregnancy, but blood tests are still popular because they are less expensive and breeders can learn to draw blood themselves, reducing costs further. Because false pregnancy is rare, blood tests are still considered very reliable. A false pregnancy may or may not last for five months. It usually ends in a “cloud burst,” which is basically a release of all the uterine fluids without a kid or placenta.

  Cheryl Zacek of Illinois had a Nubian doe that experienced a false pregnancy after being bred. “As the due date approached, Lily got bigger and bigger, and I was expecting triplets or quads, which was normal for her, but she never had any,” says Cheryl. Although her udder was getting larger toward the end of the five months, it never filled up like it does normally just before kidding. “When she’d gone about two weeks past her due date, I decided she just must have been fat.” A couple of weeks later, she received a call from the buck’s owner and learned that he had not gotten any does pregnant that year.

  We also had a doe with a false pregnancy several years ago. She was bred, and her milk dried up when she was about three months pregnant, which is normal. She was also looking very pregnant. But when she should have been about four and a half months pregnant, which is when I start checking udders for increasing milk production, her belly no longer looked pregnant, and her udder was small. If she had aborted after three months, we would have probably seen tiny kids, so a false pregnancy seemed a more likely explanation. The next fall she got pregnant again and carried the kids to term.

  Some false pregnancies started with a real pregnancy that terminated very early, but the body didn’t recognize there was no longer a fetus, which could have been what happened with our doe. However, in some cases of false pregnancy, the doe has not even been exposed to a buck.

  Feeding During Pregnancy

  Does should be neither underweight nor overweight when they are bred. Pregnancy is not the time to put a goat on a diet or try to put weight on her. Assuming that your does are in ideal condition when they get pregnant, you don’t need to make any immediate adjustments to their feeding program. You should continue feeding milkers as usual until they are dried off at three months gestation.

  During the two-month dry period, the doe should be fed a total dry-weight ration that is equal to about 2–2.5 percent of her body weight, and no more than about 0.5 percent should be grain. Feeding too much grain in pregnancy can result in overly large kids, especially if it is a single fetus. If you have good-quality hay, you may not need grain until the last couple weeks of pregnancy when you start feeding it to acclimate the goat to digesting grain again. Typically, the goal is to be feeding a doe half of her milking ration by the time she kids. Always make changes to a goat’s diet gradually. If you suddenly increase grain intake too drastically for a doe that just kidded, odds are good that she will get diarrhea, even if she doesn’t wind up with one of the more serious digestive disorders.

  It is said that you should not feed alfalfa to pregnant does, but this is based on information regarding dairy cattle. For more information on this, see “Hypocalcemia” in Chapter Seven.

  CHAPTER 10

  BIRTHING

  Goat owners worry about kidding, even though it goes well almost every time. One study found that intervention is needed in only five percent of births. If you find yourself “helping” too often, it means one or more things: you are overreacting, you need to re-evaluate your nutritional program, or you need to cull the whole herd and start over with different genetics.

  Intervening always carries a risk of infection or damaging the doe’s uterus or even hurting the kid, so it should not be done routinely. Regularly intervening also means that it will become impossible to selectively breed goats for birthing ease. You will have no idea if a doe can give birth on her own if you aren’t letting her do it. Most of my does never need assistance. I’m just there to break open an amniotic sac, if it doesn’t break on its own, get the kids dried off so that they don’t get hypothermia, and then make sure they nurse before I leave the barn.

  Unfortunately, things do go wrong sometimes, but you won’t know that unless you know what is normal and know when you need to intervene or ask for help. It is a good idea to have the phone number in the barn or in your cell phone for a vet who has experience with goats. Hopefully, you also have a mentor, an experienced breeder who is willing to answer your questions as they come up. As you read through this section, try to focus on the fact that most births are completely normal, and you’ll need to do little other than dry off the kids and coo over them.

  Getting Ready

  Like so many aspects of raising goats, if you talk to ten people about their kidding setup, you will get ten different answers. We started with only three does, and we left them together during kidding because I had read th
at other does can help clean off the kids if a doe gives birth when you aren’t there. This can be especially helpful if you have a first freshener or a doe that has triplets or quadruplets, which can be born with so little time in between that the doe may not be able to get their noses cleaned off quickly enough to avoid suffocation. However, if you have any questions about the disease status of any of your goats, having does together for kidding is a bad idea because a number of diseases can be passed through birth fluids.

  Our semi-private kidding suites use pig panels to separate the pens. Because goats are herd animals, they get stressed when they can’t see other goats. By using pig panels, the does are able to see each other, but they are also protected from being picked on. Two does will sometimes butt heads through the panels, but one cannot slam into a pregnant goat’s belly.

  After a few years of kidding in an open barn, and realizing that not all does are totally supportive of other does in labor — some are downright mean — I decided I wanted to have kidding pens. In addition to does being more protected, kids born in a pen have an easier time adapting to life outside the womb. A kid is born with an instinct to nurse, but it has nothing telling it that it’s not okay to nurse from a doe that is not its mama. It is a rare doe that will let a kid nurse if it is not hers. It is not uncommon for them to butt or bite a strange kid that tries to help itself to a snack. Kidding pens are smaller than a big barn, so it is impossible for kids to get lost. It is also easier for me when a doe gives birth in a smaller space. Some does walk when they’re pushing, and more than once, I found myself following a doe on my hands and knees with a towel as a kid was emerging. My favorite thing about kidding pens, though, is that does are giving birth in a clean space because I don’t move them in there until they are within a day or so of giving birth.

  Vicki McGaugh has been raising goats for 27 years, and during part of that time, she operated a dairy that included some goats that were CAE-positive. For that reason, she used kidding pens. However, after more than two decades of raising kids on pasteurized milk and heat-treated colostrum, she now lets her does kid in the main barn, although she still attends all births and bottle-feeds the kids. She prefers letting does give birth with the other goats around because she feels it’s less stressful for them to remain with the herd. “Until the does were actually delivering, my does hated to be away from the herd,” Vicki says. “It also made for some tussling around as a doe that had spent several days in a kidding pen moved back into the herd.”

  Although everyone has their own preference when it comes to using kidding pens or letting their does kid in an open barn, the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that the area where she gives birth needs to be clean. If you are using the deep bedding system, you need to be adding a new layer of straw every day or two. Remember that kids can aspirate or choke on shavings. There shouldn’t be exposed goat berries, and the exposed straw should not feel wet or appear to be saturated with urine. When using deep bedding, the barn needs plenty of fresh air without being drafty.

  Kidding Supplies

  You probably already have many of the following items in your home or barn. The more specialized supplies can be bought through the various goat and livestock supply companies online.

  Towels: This is listed first because it is the single most important thing to have at every birth, especially if it is cold outside. You might want to use old towels, or you can find fairly inexpensive bath towels at discount stores. Some people use newspaper to remove the initial birth goo from kids before toweling them off.

  Baby Monitor: Unless you live in your barn, you need a baby monitor so that you can hear what’s happening out there when does are due. The least expensive baby monitor will probably work. We have a metal barn, and the signal doesn’t go through metal, but we put the transmitter near the door, and it works well. A screaming goat echoes throughout the barn, so the monitor picks it up 60 feet away, and we hear it clearly in the house.

  Five years ago, we upgraded to a video monitor that was hardwired so we could watch the goats in the kidding pens from our bedroom television. Since it was hardwired, it only cost about $50. This worked great for five years, but when we turned it on this spring, the audio had become intolerably scratchy. It was impossible to sleep when the monitor was on.

  This spring we purchased a wireless security camera for about $70. We can watch the goats from anywhere using a cell phone app. The catch is that you have to have WiFi available in your barn for the camera to work. To keep the app running all night, we have to keep a cell phone plugged in because video causes the battery to run down quickly. However, we prefer this option since it is possible to check on the goats from the grocery store or anywhere that has a cell phone signal.

  Blow Dryer: In the first edition, I said that somewhere around 10–15°F, a blow dryer becomes necessary to get the kids dried off so they don’t get hypothermia. However, the more we have had to deal with winter kiddings, the more I use the blow dryer anytime it is below freezing. One week when we had particularly crazy weather that fluctuated from the teens to the 50s, it became especially obvious what a difference temperature made with the kids. The colder it was, the longer it took them to get to their feet and start looking for the teat. And the colder it was, the greater likelihood that the kid would wind up with hypothermia, unable to suck, and I’d have to milk mom to get colostrum into the kid drop by drop with a syringe or bottle.

  The farther below freezing, the greater the risk of frostbite on ears and tails when they are wet. If the temperature is below zero, a kid’s wet ears can freeze within a few minutes. Because there is so much hair on a kid’s tail, it holds a lot of liquid and can also freeze. If ear tips or the end of the tail freeze, the tissue will die, and everything that had been damaged by frost will fall off.

  Heat Lamp: In most parts of North America, if it’s below freezing, you will need a heat lamp for only the first couple of days after birth as long as the kids weigh at least two pounds. After that, kids are able to maintain their body temperature until temperatures get close to zero Fahrenheit. If you use one, be sure it is securely attached to a wall or permanent structure so that it cannot be accidentally knocked down. Heat lamps are the number one cause of barn fires. Do not use a heat lamp unless it is truly needed.

  Kid Coats: If you don’t have electricity in your barn and temperatures are getting close to zero Fahrenheit, you might want to make little coats for your newborn kids. Be sure the kids are completely dry before you put the coats on them. They can be made from old infant T-shirts for standard goat kids and from the arm of an adult sweatshirt for Nigerian Dwarf kids. The coat should fit snugly. I usually use my own sweatshirt sleeves (women size medium or large) to make kid coats for our NDs. Do not put the coat on a wet kid or leave the coat on the kid for more than a day or two. As with anything you put on goats, including collars, it could get caught on something and cause injury or death.

  Measure a kid from the back of its head to its tail. That’s how long the kid coat needs to be. The wrist of the sweatshirt arm is the collar of the coat. Cut two small holes, one on each side of the seam, for the kid’s legs. When putting it on a buckling, be sure the bottom of the coat does not cover his penis, or he’ll soon be wearing a wet coat.

  Bulb Syringe: If you have had a baby, you might have one of these already. You don’t need it for most goat births, but if you hear a lot of gurgling when a kid starts to breathe, you might want to use a bulb syringe to clear the nose. Always remember to depress the bulb before you put the tip of the syringe in the nose so that you don’t accidentally force mucus into the lungs.

  Iodine: The end of the umbilical cord can be dipped in iodine to prevent infection. An old-fashioned film canister or a small prescription pill bottle works well for holding the iodine for dipping. Iodine is also used to disinfect fingers or a hand that will be put into a doe’s vagina, even if you are wearing a disposable glove.

  Scissors: Although an umbilical cord will usually bre
ak spontaneously as the kid is being born, it doesn’t always. Some people will cut the cord with scissors, but my practice is to tear the cord a few inches from the body, leaving at least three inches of it attached to the kid.

  Disposable Gloves: You don’t have to wear gloves for an average birth unless you want to protect yourself from a doe’s birthing fluids. If you have any doubts about her disease status, if you have a cut on your hand, or if you are pregnant, you should wear gloves. Some diseases that cause abortion can be transmitted to humans, so it is especially important to wear gloves if a doe is giving birth earlier than expected. You should also wear gloves (doused with iodine) if you need to put your hand into a doe, because it is virtually impossible to get your bare hands very clean.

  Pritchard Teat and Bottle: It’s a good idea to have these on hand just in case, especially if they are not available for purchase locally. They cost only a few dollars, and if you raise goats for long enough, you will need them. Our first kidding season went perfectly, but we wound up with two bottle babies our second year. In a pinch, you can use a human baby bottle, but you’ll need to cut an X in the nipple to create a hole big enough for a goat kid. Pritchard teats can be attached to soda bottles, or you can buy a bottle with it. In either case, the bottle is soft, so you can gently squeeze it to get a few drops of colostrum into a kid that can’t suck or is refusing to suck on the nipple.