Hooves
Ideally, hooves should be coming out of the doe’s vagina in such a position that if the doe were standing, the kid would be exiting the vagina and stepping onto the ground (if it could walk the moment it’s born, of course). Upside-down hooves are most likely hind legs, and the doe will be able to give birth more quickly than if the kid were tail first. Back hooves presenting is the most stretched-out, tapered position possible for a kid being born.
The front hooves can also present upside down. If you see upside-down hooves and the doe is not making progress, it could be the kid is upside down, or posterior, although this is extremely rare. In fact, we are close to 600 births and have never seen it here. To figure out if you are seeing front or rear hooves, run a couple of fingers up along the legs. Front legs will have knees where the legs bend toward the back of the hooves, whereas hind legs will have hocks that bend in the direction of the front of the hooves. If you discover that a kid is posterior, you should call your veterinarian or mentor.
Ribs
More than two hundred kids had been born on our farm before we had our first truly unusual presentation when a kid tried to come into the world ribs first. As you can imagine, that didn’t work. I had to turn the kid so that the nose and a front leg were presenting, which was more stressful mentally than it was physically challenging. It turned out that the kid had been dead for at least a few days. In my experience, most of the really weird presentations occur with kids that are already dead. Live kids do a lot to get themselves born, which is why the vast majority come out nose first.
Head
A presentation with two front feet sticking out and the head turned around over the back is problematic. This presentation is a perfect example of why you should never pull on a kid unless you know where all the parts are. If you pull on the front legs of a kid whose head is turned backwards over its spine, you will make no progress, and you may wind up injuring the doe and the kid. To correct this situation, the head needs to be turned so that the nose is pointing forward.
We’ve had two kids born with the crown of its head presenting first, rather than its nose. In one case, the kid was much smaller than average, which was good because the crown of a kid’s head is usually too large for a doe to push out. You’ll know this is the situation when you see an ear presenting. If the doe cannot give birth to the kid in this position, you have to push the head back into the doe far enough so that you can lift the chin and get the kid positioned with its nose pointed toward the exit.
Two Kids
Two kids presenting simultaneously is rare and sounds worse than it is because at some point one kid will probably slip past the other one and be born. However, in the interest of not exhausting the doe, you can hold back one kid as the doe continues to push. Hopefully, you have two kids trying to come out front hooves and noses first. If you have one breech and one nose and hoof first, it is a good idea to help the nose and hoof come out first. If you pull the breech kid first, its head could lock with the head of the other kid and get stuck, which would necessitate pushing it partially back inside so that you can hold back the head of the second kid. In the amount of time it takes to do that, the breech kid will die from lack of oxygen as the umbilical cord would have been pinched or torn.
Failure to Dilate
It is rare that a goat will fail to dilate, but it can happen. One of the two caesarean sections that we’ve had was in a six-year-old that didn’t dilate. This is sometimes called “ring womb,” and in less severe cases, you may be able to manually dilate the cervix. However, you should talk to an experienced goat vet before doing this, and keep in mind that it is possible to rupture the uterus or tear the cervix.
If a goat seems to be having an especially long first stage of labor or really wimpy contractions, it could be due to a calcium deficiency. If a doe is clearly in early labor — standing up, pawing the ground, and laying down repeatedly, then pushing her legs out in front of her while craning her neck and putting her ears back but not making any loud noises — for four or five hours, I will usually give her a calcium drench. If a doe is doing all of those things and is also screaming loudly, then she is pushing. If you don’t see any kid body parts presenting within 30 minutes to an hour after a doe starts pushing, the first kid is probably malpositioned.
Umbilical Cord
When a kid is being born, the umbilical cord almost always breaks a few inches away from the kid’s body. If it doesn’t break, many people cut it, and in either case, will tie off the cord with string or dental floss, and dip the end in iodine. I followed this procedure for the first few years I had goats, and I even used fancy plastic cord clamps instead of dental floss or thread. Then one day I witnessed the most interesting argument on a goat internet group about how to treat umbilical cords at birth. On one hand, people argued that kids would get navel ill and possibly die if you didn’t dip the cords. On the other hand were people who said it was a waste of time because the does would lick off the iodine. Some people were dipping cords multiple times over the first day or two, while others had completely given up the practice. The interesting thing is that none of those people who were not dipping the cords had ever had a kid with navel ill. I started looking for research on dipping cords and found a sheep study that showed a lower rate of infection among lambs that were pasture born than those that were born in a barn and had their umbilical cords cut and dipped.
Assisting in a Birth
Before putting your hand into a doe’s vagina, clean off her back end by washing it with warm soapy water or by using gauze pads to clean it with iodine. Always wear gloves. If you have Nigerians, you can probably use disposable gloves available in any drug store, but if you have standard goats, you will need cattle OB gloves, which cover the arm up to the shoulder. I always squirt iodine all over my gloved hand before putting it into the goat. If you need to insert more than a couple of fingers, you should use a lubricant, which can be a natural oil, such as olive or sunflower. Obstetrical lubricants are also available, but I prefer not to use them because they’re a blend of synthetic chemicals.
Ultimately I developed my own middle-of-the-road approach to umbilical cords. The lamb study basically proved to me that even if you dipped cords, it would not compensate for a dirty environment at birth, which is one reason I wanted to have kidding pens for my does. It also occurred to me that if you were going to cut the cord with a pair of scissors, they needed to be sterile, and the cord needed to be sterile so that you were not driving bacteria into the cord as you cut it. It is not easy to keep a pair of scissors sterile when you’re in a barn, nor is it easy to sterilize them between kids. In my research, I had read a suggestion that tearing the cord off a few inches from the belly, rather than cutting it short, mimicked nature, so I adopted that as my practice. On the rare occasion a doe surprises me and gives birth somewhere that is not clean, I dip the umbilical cord in iodine, and in the case of an umbilical cord that tears off at the belly during birth, I douse the belly button with iodine.
Regardless of whether you have dipped the cord, it should be left alone to dry up and fall off on its own over the next week or two.
Placenta
In most cases of multiple births, there is nothing hanging out of the doe’s vagina between kids other than perhaps an umbilical cord, but after the last kid is born, there will be one or more umbilical cords and other birth membranes. Within three or four hours after the last kid is born, the doe will pass a placenta. There will only be one placenta, regardless of how many kids were born. Although some people take it away immediately, I let my does eat it if they are interested because it is rich in nutrients. If they have not eaten it within an hour or two, I remove it from the birthing area. Some caution that a doe can choke on the placenta, and although it is possible, it is very uncommon.
The placenta can take as long as 12 hours to pass, but that is unusual. Do not pull on the placenta or attempt to rush it by tying something heavy on it. If you tear it, it could brea
k off inside the vagina, and you will never know whether the doe has passed the remainder until you have a very sick goat. If a doe has a lot of membranes hanging out, she may try to grab them and pull on them herself. If one of my does tries that, I tie the membranes in a knot (or two or three) to make them short enough that she can’t reach them. I want to know when the placenta is passed, and I won’t know if the cord and other membranes are ripped off. When a doe gives birth at midnight, you might not want to stay with her for hours until she passes the placenta. If there was a cord hanging out of her when you went to bed, you will know she has passed it and eaten it during the night if you don’t see any sign of it in the morning.
After the doe gives birth to the last kid, you will see an umbilical cord or membranes from the amniotic sac hanging out of the doe’s vagina. Over the next few hours, you will start to see the placenta gradually making its appearance as each of the cotyledons separate from the uterus.
A goat placenta looks like a lot of little red prunes connected to each other by a clear to white membrane. The prune-looking things are cotyledons, and the nutrient exchange that occurs between mom and babies happens in the cotyledons. There are about 70 to 125 cotyledons in a goat placenta. It normally takes a few hours for the placenta to come out — and seems to come out inch by inch over the hours — because each cotyledon has to separate from the uterus.
Feeding Post Birth
After the doe gives birth, she is usually thirsty and hungry. If it is cold outside, I get a bucket of warm water, which most does love to drink in the middle of winter. I also give her a pan of grain. While the doe is eating her grain, she is standing still, so it gives me the opportunity to work with any kid that has not yet perfected its nursing technique. If a doe had multiples, I will also put the smallest kid under the doe to give it another opportunity to nurse. If you will be bottle-feeding the kids, put the doe on the milk stand to give her the grain, and milk out all of the colostrum.
Newborn Check
Shortly after each kid is born, you should do a newborn exam to make sure that each kid has all its pieces in the right places. In addition to checking for obvious things, such as an anus, you also want to know if a kid has any disqualifying defects so that you don’t offer it for sale or get your hopes up about its future in your herd. Peeing or pooping is generally a good sign that the newborn’s plumbing is in working order. Although it is rare, kids are occasionally born without an anus, and obviously will not survive. The first few bowel movements after birth will be meconium, a black tarry substance, but once the kid is consuming plenty of colostrum and all of the meconium is passed, the stool will be mustard yellow.
If a kid latches on and nurses well, the mouth is probably in good shape. However, if milk comes out the kid’s nose or if it has difficulty latching on, run your finger along the roof of the kid’s mouth to be sure it doesn’t have a cleft palate.
It is normal for a kid to have very soft hooves at birth. Don’t worry if you accidentally knock off part of the jelly-like hooves as you are drying the kid. It doesn’t hurt the kid, and it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong.
Check that each kid — buck or doe — has only two teats. Extra teats are a disqualification in show goats, and they are not something you want in milkers. In addition to possibly getting in the way when milking, extra teats can also get infected if they are functional. If they are not functional, kids can get confused and try to suck on them and then not grow properly because they are not getting enough to eat. A buck with extra teats should not be used for breeding, so you should plan to castrate it.
You also want to be sure that bucklings have two testicles, regardless of whether you plan to keep them intact. If testicles are not descended at birth, the odds are good that they will not descend. A buck with only one testicle should not be bred, and it is impossible to easily castrate a buck with an undescended testicle, making it a challenge to sell as a pet. With an undescended testicle, he will still get stinky and act bucky. Most people will use a cryptorchid as a meat animal.
The extra teat on this young doe is growing near the base of another teat.
Kid Complications
You might think that as soon as the kids are born, you are home free, and that is usually the case. However, every now and then, you will have challenges with kids.
Weak or Nonresponsive Kids
Most kids are born with plenty of energy. They may be screaming within a minute of taking the first breath, and some are even trying to stand a few minutes later. But what do you do if a kid seems barely alive? Some people recommend swinging a kid upside down to clear its lungs, but I prefer a more gentle approach. I hold the kid in my lap with its head lower than its body, and I use a bulb syringe to suction both nostrils, as well as the back of the mouth. I rub the kid vigorously with a towel, placing one hand on each side of the chest. If you decide to swing a kid, keep in mind that newborn kids are very wet and slippery, so it may be helpful to hold the kid with a towel to get a better grip. The head is held in one hand, while the other hand holds the kid’s body.
Hypothermic Kids
If you live in a northern climate and kid during the colder months, you will have to deal with hypothermia at some point. If you find a kid that is still wet, but is cold and nonresponsive, don’t be too quick to declare it dead. If you can feel a heartbeat, it isn’t too late to try to save it. The goal is simply to raise the body temperature back to normal as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is to put it in a bucket or sink of warm water that is 100–105°F. There is no need to find a thermometer. If it feels like bath water, it’s probably fine. Put the kid’s body in the water with only its head sticking out. You can check the kid’s temperature by putting your finger in its mouth. It will feel ice cold, but as the kid warms up, its mouth will feel warmer. Once the mouth feels warm and the kid is more responsive, you can dry it with a towel and move it to a heating pad.
Without a thermometer, it is easy to overheat a kid when wrapping it in a heating pad. Overheating will cause a seizure that the kid may or may not survive. A thermometer placed between the kid’s body and the heating pad should not read above 102°F because you don’t want the kid’s body to heat up more than that. If you get a reading above 102°F, do not wrap the kid in the heating pad, but lay it on top of the pad. The pad will continue to heat the kid’s body, but the kid will be able to cool itself by releasing its body heat into the room. If the kid starts to pant, it’s overheating. Continue to check the temperature of the kid’s mouth over the next few hours to make sure it is maintaining a normal body temperature, especially after you turn off the heating pad.
Most kids with hypothermia become bottle babies because the stress sets them back developmentally. After it has suffered from hypothermia, a kid might not be walking around for a day or two, making it impossible for it to nurse. If you feel the kid sucking on your finger when you check its temperature, it should be able to take a bottle. If it is not sucking, you can tube feed it, or, if you have a lot of patience, you can use a bottle with a Pritchard teat. Since the bottle is soft, you can gently squeeze it to get the milk into the kid a few drops at a time. If the kid is not swallowing, then you will have to tube feed it. It is important to get colostrum into these kids as quickly as possible. However, the kid must be warmed up first. Digestion does not happen when the body temperature is less than 99°F. It is ideal if someone else can milk the dam or thaw frozen colostrum while you warm up the kid.
CHAPTER 11
RAISING KIDS
The decision whether to dam raise or bottle raise kids needs to be made before the kids are born. There has been a bias towards bottle raising baby dairy animals for the past few decades as factory farms took over the dairy industry. Dairies want as much milk as possible from the cows, which they can do if they milk them and ration the milk given to the calves, selling the excess milk and increasing profits. In spite of the fact that our goat website includes milk records and clearly states that our kids
are dam raised, I still get questions such as “Can you milk a doe if she was dam raised?” I always point out that people were milking cows, goats, and sheep for thousands of years before bottles were invented. An old-time farmer will laugh at the idea of bottle raising kids. It is a modern misconception that dam-raised kids are inevitably wild. When you have thousands of cows or goats in a dairy, it is impossible to socialize them if they are dam raised, so as dairies grew in size, bottle-feeding became necessary for socialization purposes. When farmers historically had only a few milking animals, they inevitably spent enough time with them that they could handle them and milk them when they matured.
Like most animals, goats will be wild without plenty of human contact as babies. A litter of kittens found in the woods or in a secluded part of a barn will be as wild as lions. Goats are very much the same way. When kids are born on pasture and get little human interaction, they will be wild and difficult to handle. When handled daily, though, they will be friendly. But regardless of whether their mother or a human raises them, some kids can be incredibly stubborn.
Raising Goats Naturally Page 23