Feeding Tube and 60 cc Syringe: You won’t know you need one of these until the minute you need it, so have one on hand. I’ve gone as long as four or five years without needing to tube feed a kid, but I’ve also had years when I had to tube feed two or three.
Signs of Labor
Figuring out when a doe is going to kid is probably the most challenging thing to learn when it comes to raising goats. I’ve seen so many new goat owners think their doe is in labor because she’s breathing hard or standing funny or even because of the way she’s looking at them. I know from experience that it is very easy to project our own feelings onto a doe — those hopeful feelings of seeing new kids soon! The good news is that you don’t have to be a goat whisperer to figure out when your goat is going into labor. There are several signs that she is getting close to kidding, but keep in mind that every goat is different, and the same doe may give birth differently from one year to the next.
Udder
A doe will start to get an udder during the last month of her pregnancy. It gradually gets bigger, and then, typically, it suddenly looks full a few hours before she kids. There have been times when I was doing chores and a doe turned to walk away, and her udder jumped out at me, making me say, “Whoa!” A big change that happens very suddenly usually means the doe is getting close to kidding. Some does, however, will get a very big udder as early as day 142. For these does, the udder may not be the best indicator of imminent birth.
Tail Ligaments
Tail ligaments are often mentioned as a way to figure out if a doe is close to kidding. It can take years to learn to read tail ligaments accurately, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t get it quickly. During our third kidding season, we thought a doe had lost her ligaments two weeks before her due date. We asked online if this was possible and quickly got a couple of responses saying yes. But after a few more years of experience, we realized the tail ligaments don’t soften up completely until a doe is within about 12 hours of kidding. We simply had been having a hard time finding them as the muscles around the ligaments had softened.
The ligaments at the tail head are normally so hard that they can easily be mistaken for bones. However, as a doe gets closer to kidding, the ligaments will start to soften up. A lot of people say they “disappear,” but that’s not entirely accurate. As they get softer, the ligaments get harder to find, but, of course, they’re still there. Confusion sets in because the muscles in that area also get softer, such that it is sometimes possible to wrap your fingers around the tail head several days or even a couple of weeks before a doe kids. But this doesn’t mean the ligaments are necessarily softened, only that the muscles have softened. In almost all cases where a person thinks a goat’s ligaments have disappeared two weeks before her due date, it is actually the muscles that have softened.
If you check a doe’s tail ligaments a couple of weeks before she is due to kid, you will know exactly where they are and be more likely to notice the subtle changes that occur. It is helpful to compare does if you have several due around the same time. Learning to read tail ligaments is easier if you have someone to compare notes with. My two daughters and I frequently disagreed on the softness of a doe’s ligaments. One of us would pronounce a doe’s ligaments gone, but then another of us would go out to the barn and come back saying that she had found them right away.
I often see comments online that a doe’s ligaments were gone but returned the next day. Because the softness of the ligaments is connected to the doe’s hormone levels, this would be cause for concern if it had indeed happened. However, in every case I’ve seen, the doe gave birth to healthy kids several days later, leading to the conclusion that the commentator simply had missed the presence of the tail ligaments a few days earlier.
Belly
One of the things we started to notice over the years was that when a doe was within hours of kidding, her belly would “drop.” During most of a pregnancy, a doe’s belly is very high. My youngest daughter would say a doe was “still a table top” to describe a doe that did not look like she would kid soon. As the kids start to jockey for position and line up to be born, they fall into the lower part of the abdomen, the upper part of the abdomen looks less round, and there may be a hollow appearance near the spine.
The appearance of the belly and the udder, and the condition of the tail ligaments give a reasonable warning that the doe will kid within the next 12 to 24 hours. Once you see all three of these changes, you will start to see other changes that mean the doe is in early labor. The doe will start to act differently when she is in labor, but you cannot assume she is in labor based on personality changes alone. So many new goat owners assume a doe is in labor based solely on her behavior, and I include myself in that group. The first couple of years that I had goats, I spent many hours out in the barn sure that a doe was going to give birth soon because of the way she was acting. If you have a doe in a stall or pen by herself, odds are high that she will start to bleat when you leave her, regardless of whether she is anywhere close to giving birth. Since they are herd animals, they don’t want to be alone, and they let you know that when you try to leave them. This is where having a baby monitor can be very helpful. After we got a monitor, we realized that the doe would stop screaming within a couple of minutes of us having left the barn.
Personality changes may include a doe that is normally aloof suddenly wanting your attention or the herd queen that is normally pushing other goats around now ignoring the herd members. As a doe gets closer to giving birth, she will lose interest in food. Goats normally love grain, so if you offer grain to a doe and she completely ignores it, she is probably within an hour or two of giving birth.
Mucus
As the doe gets closer to kidding, you may or may not see a string of mucus hanging from her vagina. Don’t get too excited if you see a little bit of mucus glistening on a doe’s vulva. On the other hand, if a doe is screaming loudly but you see no mucus, don’t assume that nothing is happening. Mucus is one of the least reliable indicators of labor. I was a childbirth educator for humans back in the 1990s, and “mucus plug” was a term that I loathed because it was terribly misleading. It makes it sound like there is a plug that is going to come out like a cork comes out of a wine bottle. It rarely works like that with humans, and it does not work like that at all with goats. I don’t get too excited about mucus unless it’s as thick and about as long as my thumb, and then I don’t leave the barn. By the time you see this much mucus, however, the doe is usually showing other signs of obvious labor.
A tiny bit of mucus on her vagina doesn’t usually mean much, but a string of mucus an inch thick and several inches long usually means a doe is within minutes of kidding.
Although some does give birth standing up, if she is lying on her side, she will be pushing her legs straight out in front of her body. Her ears may be back, and she may be vocalizing loudly.
Birth
When a doe begins actively pushing, you should have no doubt about what is happening. Does can be quiet and stoic in the early stages of pushing, or they can be talkative early in labor, but at some point, almost every doe will start to vocalize quite loudly. Although most does will lie down when they start seriously pushing, they may stand up and lie down again to reposition themselves over and over again, and some give birth standing.
What I Learned from Fannie, Gherri, and Star
In the weeks leading up to our first goat births, I was reading everything I could find on the subject. My two youngest children and I were sitting in the barn with Fannie when she was in labor. I was holding one of my books, continuing to reread sections and looking at drawings that showed the different ways goat babies might try to be born. The book implied that anything other than two front hooves and a nose would be a problem that would require our assistance.
As Fannie pushed, we finally saw a nose and then a hoof. And as she continued to push, we still saw only a nose and one hoof. Based on what I had read, I thought that one of us would n
eed to put a hand inside Fannie and pull the second front leg forward. My then ten-year-old daughter and I began to freak out. “Are your hands clean?” I asked her. We quickly discussed who should go wash their hands to help Fannie, but as we were talking, the goat pushed out the kid.
A couple of days later, we walked out to the barn in the morning to find Gherri had given birth to two healthy kids that were bouncing around and nursing. When our third doe went into labor, we were again there to watch and help out, if necessary. After the first kid was born and we dried it off, the second kid presented tail first. As we began to freak out again because the kid was not presenting “correctly,” Star gave a big push, and the kid came shooting out before we could do anything. I started to wonder if perhaps the books had exaggerated the need for assistance and started to relax about birthing.
Pushing Time
How long do goats push? The answer to this question can be incredibly varied. It can appear that some goats push for less than five minutes, and a kid torpedoes out of its dam’s body. Those are usually fun for new goat owners because there is no time for worry. Some goats may be screaming for 15 minutes or more before you see a nose or a hoof, however, and it can be challenging to relax. The important thing to remember is that there is no reason to rush. Seconds rarely make a life-and-death difference. Before seeing part of a kid, it is hard to know when you should start to worry because of the difference in the way that goats act during labor and birth. If a doe is screaming loudly during contractions every few minutes and laying her head in the straw between contractions, you may start to think about intervening after half an hour. But if a doe is quiet and appears to give a wimpy little push every 15 minutes, she might be fine for a few hours because she’s still in early labor. You know a birth is going well when you see a hoof, nose, or tail, and progress with each contraction. One study showed that it was somewhere between 3 and 38 minutes between the time that the first hoof emerged and the time of birth, with 12 minutes being the average, so you can see there is quite a bit of variation in what is normal (Smith and Sherman, Goat Medicine, page 600). Ultimately, experience is the best teacher.
This is a textbook presentation of a kid at birth. First you see the front hooves, then the nose. In this particular birth, five minutes elapsed from the time the first photo was taken until the time of the last photo, and the entire kid was born less than a minute after the head emerged. Some births will go more quickly, however, and some more slowly.
Amniotic Sac Bubble
You may or may not see a bubble of fluid emerge. There is no need to pop it as it will usually break on its own, so you don’t want to be terribly close to the doe when a bubble is emerging or you could wind up getting wet. I personally don’t want to break the amniotic sac until the nose is out because the doe is pushing in response to feeling pressure. A single hoof doesn’t create much pressure, so if you break the sac when you see only the tip of a hoof inside the bubble, you will find that the doe quits pushing or doesn’t push as hard. That causes most people to start to worry. Once the nose is out, the pressure of the head will cause her to continue pushing, so I break the sac at that point.
Many times, a kid may be in an amniotic sac as the doe pushes it out. If the sac doesn’t break as the kid is being born, you need to break it and clean off the kid’s nose so it can take its first breaths. This is one of those simple things that can lead to a kid’s death if you aren’t there during birth. Although experienced does are usually very good about cleaning up kids at birth, a first-time doe may not realize what is happening and won’t know that she needs to turn around to start cleaning the kid. If a doe has multiple kids, the subsequent kids may be born so quickly that the doe hasn’t cleaned off the first one by the time the others are born. This is more likely to happen with triplets or more. We have videotaped births where multiple kids were born 60 to 90 minutes apart. We once had a doe that gave birth to five kids in five minutes, although there is no need to worry if it takes longer. This is merely an example of how you can wind up with kids suffocating when multiples are born without a person there to help.
Malpresentations
Determining when you need to assist at a birth is not an exact science, and you can never go back and redo something that did not turn out well. That means that once you do intervene, you’ll never know if the situation would have resolved itself without your assistance. There is no book that can tell you what to do 100 percent of the time when you are with a doe that is giving birth because every situation is unique. Sometimes even the most experienced goat owner is challenged to know what the best course of action is for a doe that appears to be having difficulty. And, of course, nothing can replace the services of a good veterinarian.
A seemingly lengthy labor without any sign of a kid is commonly a worrisome situation, and sometimes the reality is that the owner has assumed the doe was actually in labor when she was not. I have even known several people who sat up all night with does they thought were in labor when it turned out that they were not even pregnant. It is not unusual for new goat owners to think a doe is in labor for days before she actually gives birth. That happened to us a lot in the early years.
The most common birthing complication is a misaligned kid, and fixing it is more art than science. A kid needs to have one end of its body presenting, so if you can see a hoof, a nose, or a tail, the situation is not too bad. With each push, you should see a little more of the kid’s body part. If a doe has gone through several contractions with no progress, it may be a sign that something isn’t quite right.
Noses
A lot of people worry if they don’t see a nose and two hooves. Maybe this is a difference in breeding stock, but in my experience does have no trouble giving birth with a nose and one hoof or a nose only unless the kid is very large. They may need to push a little longer than if the kid had two hooves and a nose presenting, but the kid will usually be unaffected. We learned early in our homesteading days that baby animals seem to weather the most tumultuous births with less stress than the humans who are watching. We had a rather wild yearling ewe running around the pasture for 45 minutes with a lamb’s head sticking out of her back end as we tried to catch her. The lamb was just fine when we finally got it out.
Getting Help Online
There is no shortage of forums and Internet groups where you can sign on and start asking questions or posting comments about goat keeping. This can be a wonderful way to learn and share information, but there is also the possibility that you will receive some seriously bad information. Answers are given to questions about situations that may not be clearly described. In the case of birthing complications, a lot of people are quick to suggest intervening in a birth without getting a clear picture of what is happening. As a new goat owner, I was on the receiving end of some bad advice a few times. I signed on and said that I had a doe that had been in labor for a couple of days, and several responses painted terrible pictures of what horrible tragedy must have already occurred. Some strongly encouraged me to intervene and start pulling kids. Had I tried, I would have been unsuccessful because the reality was that the doe was not even in labor. She gave birth to three healthy kids the next day.
If you use an online forum for goat advice, always include as much information about a situation as possible. I’ve seen people ask something like, “How soon after a doe passes mucus will she give birth?” which seems like a simple question. People may immediately start to respond, but the answer to that question is that it could be anywhere from a week to five minutes depending on how much mucus was actually passed.
When posting a question online, don’t simply say that a doe is in labor. Describe exactly what she has been doing and for how long. Is she eating and drinking? Vocalizing? Standing? Walking? Lying down, looking alert, with her head up? Or is she lying with her head on the straw and panting? Even if you include as many details as you can think of, the people giving you advice may still not fully understand your situation. And remember tha
t you have no way of knowing how much experience and knowledge anyone online has.
If only a nose is presenting and a doe is not making progress, or if she births the head and then makes no progress after several contractions, you may need to reach in, find one of the legs, and pull it forward to decrease the circumference of the kid’s shoulder area. If the kid’s head is already out, you may have to push it partially back in to have enough room to find the kid’s front leg. This can be physically challenging because it can be a tight squeeze to get your hand into the cervix. And you have to be very careful because a doe’s cervix is paper thin when fully dilated, and it is easy to tear it. The most important thing to remember in this situation is to not panic. There is no reason to hurry.
If the nose and one front leg are out, you may be able to simply put gentle traction on the leg as the doe is pushing.
Breech
If you see a tail presenting, it will take longer for the doe to push out the kid because the back end of the kid is blunt and larger than the nose and two front feet. Breech births are not uncommon with goats, and they are not usually a cause for alarm. Most goats are able to give birth to a breech kid without assistance. If you see a tail presenting and the kid is not making any progress after several contractions, you can reach into the doe to pull the hind legs out, reducing the circumference of the kid. The biggest danger with a breech birth is that the kid can wind up deprived of oxygen if the head is not born as soon as the umbilical cord is out. Once the back half of a breech kid has been born, the placenta will not be supplying oxygen to the kid because the umbilical cord is pinched or broken. You need to gently pull the rest of the kid out of the doe’s body so that the kid can start breathing. If the doe is standing, gravity will usually take care of this if the kid is heavy enough, but not always.
Raising Goats Naturally Page 22