Raising Goats Naturally

by Deborah Niemann

  Some claim that it is easier to milk does that were raised on a bottle. This view comes from the fact that when an entire herd is employing bottle-feeding, the does are easier to milk overall. It is not the doe that was bottle-fed as a kid that is easier to milk, but rather it is the doe that has no kids to feed that is easier to milk. If a doe has been nursing kids for a couple of months and is put on the milk stand, she may not be thrilled with the idea of letting you milk her because she firmly believes that the milk is for her kids. Just as she would kick at any strange kid that tries to nurse, she may kick at the bucket or your hand.

  What I Learned from Cicada

  The first year that we had more than a dozen goats kidding, my daughters decided that milking ten does was more than enough. As several more kidded, we put them and their kids in the pasture across the creek. Although they had access to wonderful browse, it meant that they had human interaction only twice a day, when we refilled the water. Up until that point, we had never had any unfriendly kids, so we didn’t realize the importance of spending time with them.

  We kept three of the doelings, and although one of them was quite friendly, the other two were not. In fact, Cicada was so wild that it was impossible for anyone to catch her without the help of other people. By the time she was a year old, I realized it would have been impossible to milk her if we had bred her to kid as a yearling. I put her in a ten-foot by ten-foot stall in the barn with another goat, and although they had as much hay as they wanted to eat from a hay feeder, I went in twice a day with a small pan of grain, which I held in my lap. As dry does, they didn’t need grain, but goats love it and can usually be bribed with it. The other doe would run up immediately and start to eat. Being competitive and curious, Cicada hesitantly inched towards me to get the grain. I let her have a few bites before I touched her. She bolted. Each day, when I touched her, she reacted a little less quickly, and by the end of the week, she decided that she could eat the grain while I was petting her. She is now ten years old and is one of our favorite milk goats, although this is her last lactation, and she will be enjoying her retirement in the pasture with her daughter, Lady.

  Many people in the US take kids away at birth and start milking the does with the assumption that they will get more milk, and in the case of commercial dairies, make more money. However, several European studies have shown that this is not necessarily true. Does actually produce more milk when nursing kids than when being milked by machine, and after calculating all costs, including labor and electricity, one Spanish study of 80 goats showed that the additional income earned per kid that was naturally reared was €5.18.27 Another study of 70 goats showed that although it cost about €4 more to naturally raise a kid, the profit per doe over the course of her lactation was €29.95 more because she was producing more milk than the does whose kids were taken away and artificially reared.28

  Aside from the issue of disease transmission, the decision to dam raise or bottle-feed kids is one of personal preference. While some people say that bottle-fed kids are friendlier, I view them as annoying. They don’t realize that you are not the same species, so they are very pushy, jump on people, pull long hair, and suck on fingers, which can be dangerous if you have small children. It is very easy for a kid to suck a finger to the back of its mouth and bite, drawing blood. They are also much harder to keep fenced in because they don’t have the desire to stay with mom and the rest of the herd.

  In our third year of raising goats, we wound up with five bottle babies. We had been using single-strand electric fencing up until that point, but the bottle girls would go through it without hesitation. They would run around the front yard and come up to the house wanting to see us. And when winter came, they discovered the young, tender bark on our three-year-old fruit trees. By the end of winter, nine of the ten trees were dead because the kids had stripped off the bark.

  I prefer to dam raise kids because, in my experience, they are healthier than bottle-fed kids are. The mother’s milk has natural antibodies, and coupled with good barn hygiene, my dam-raised kids rarely have any problems with worms or coccidia as long as they are nursing. This is why I never wean doelings that I’m keeping. I consider it health insurance for the next generation of milkers to let them have access to all the benefits of their mother’s milk for as long as the mother is willing to let them nurse, which is usually at least six months. I have occasionally heard of someone who continues giving kids a bottle for that long, but most people stop bottle-feeding around two or three months because it is a chore.

  Bottle raising kids is considered a disease prevention strategy because illnesses such as CAE, Johne’s, and mycoplasma can be transmitted through raw milk and infect kids. Although testing is available, a goat may not test positive for months after infection. If an owner shows their goats, it is possible that a goat could become infected and not test positive until after infecting its kids. You can also bring one of these diseases into your herd by purchasing an infected animal. Under a disease prevention program, all kids are removed from their mothers at birth and fed heat-treated colostrum and pasteurized milk.

  Even if you decide to dam raise kids, there may be times when you have to bottle-feed a kid or two. Some breeds, like Nigerian Dwarves and Nubians, are more likely to have triplets, quadruplets, or even more, but not every doe is able to produce enough milk to feed that many. Because a first freshener has no milking history, I will bottle-feed two of the kids if the doe has quadruplets. When a first freshener has triplets, I weigh the kids daily to make sure that they are all growing equally. Even if a doe makes enough milk, there is a chance that a smaller kid may not be getting its fair share. Does that freshened in the past should be able to feed triplets, but if they have more than that, previous milk records and her dam’s kidding history will indicate whether it’s realistic to assume that she will be able to provide enough milk for that many kids. A Nigerian has to peak at half a gallon a day minimum to feed four kids, but for optimum growth, she should be producing three quarts to a gallon for that many kids. A miniature breed would need to peak at a gallon minimum, and a standard goat would have to produce at least a gallon and a half, although three gallons would be better. While kids will survive with a dam producing at these minimum levels, they will not grow as fast as twins or singles born in the herd, and they will have more problems with coccidiosis due to lack of antibodies. Kids are born with very immature immune systems, and they really need lots of antibodies from their mother’s milk to be as healthy as possible. It is not simply a matter of caloric intake.

  One type of kid rearing is not more time-consuming than the other. You will be spending your time doing different things, though. If you bottle-feed kids, you’ll be spending time making bottles, and you have to stick to a schedule for feeding the kids. If you dam raise, you will need to spend time with the kids daily, but you can do it whenever it is convenient for you. I usually do it at the end of the day, while I’m finishing chores, because that works for me.

  Getting Started With Dam Raising

  If you have decided to dam raise your kids, you’ll want to make sure they know how to nurse before you leave the barn after the birth. Some kids will be up and looking for the teat within five or ten minutes of being born, but others may seem clueless. A kid that isn’t looking for the teat within about half an hour of birth can be placed under the doe with the kid’s nose next to the teat. That’s all some kids need to wake up to the possibility of their first meal. The truly clueless kid might need to have its mouth opened and a little milk squirted on the tongue to encourage it. And once in a while, you need to put the teat in the kid’s mouth and support its chin as it starts to suck. After nursing once, most kids know what to do. Don’t be alarmed when you see the kids nursing for only 30 seconds or a minute. That’s perfectly normal because goat babies nurse very frequently.

  Getting Started With Bottle-feeding

  Starting to bottle-feed is similar to starting the kid nursing in dam raising in that som
e kids will catch on quickly while others will fight as if they think you’re trying to poison them. In most cases, you will need to open the kid’s mouth and put the nipple in it while supporting the chin. At some point within a few feedings or a few days, the kid will start to grab the nipple as soon as it sees it.

  Kids should have their first colostrum as soon as possible after birth. The textbooks say they should consume ten percent of their body weight within the first 24 hours, and half of that should be within the first six hours. Many kids will happily consume more, especially when they are receiving five feedings. To determine how much colostrum to feed, calculate the weight of the kid in ounces. For example, a seven-pound kid is 112 ounces, and ten percent of that is 11.2 ounces of colostrum in the first 24 hours with 5.6 ounces in the first six hours. A three-pound Nigerian kid is 48 ounces, so it would need 4.8 ounces of colostrum.

  The following charts are guidelines for how much milk a kid needs and how often. It’s a minimum of ten percent of body weight up to a maximum of twenty percent. If a kid develops diarrhea, reduce the amount of milk per feeding but increase the number of feedings per day so that the kid still consumes the same total per day. If the diarrhea doesn’t stop within a few hours of reducing the milk per feeding, check for other causes.

  If you read the first edition of this book, you may notice that I now feed more milk to my Nigerian Dwarf kids. Around the time the first book was published, I started experimenting with different bottle-feeding practices to figure out how to get my bottle babies to be as healthy as my dam-raised kids. I realized that the dam-raised kids of the best milkers grew the fastest, and they also had no problems with worms or coccidiosis. When I looked at what their dams were producing, I realized they were consuming close to a quart of milk per day. When I increased the milk for the bottle babies, I got the results I was looking for. They started growing faster and were healthier. I no longer raise standard breed goats, so I have not been able to do the same experimenting with them, but I’ve noticed some standard goat breeders are also feeding their bottle babies more than what was customary a few years back. Ellen Dorsey of Dill’s A Little Goat Farm in Chelsea, Oklahoma, has raised Nubians and Alpines and says, “I’ll give them a one-liter bottle, which is around 38 ounces, three times a day and then gradually reduce the middle bottle once they start eating hay and grain. So, I max them out at 114 ounces.” As I always say, watch your goats, and they’ll let you know what works and what doesn’t.

  Even if you plan to dam raise, you may find yourself bottle-feeding if a doe dies or has more kids than she can feed, so it’s a good idea to have supplies on hand for emergencies.

  Kids can be fed using a variety of goat and sheep bottles and teats, and I’ve even used human baby bottles, which are the least effective as the hole is too small and the nipple too short for some kids. Lamb and kid teats are longer and do a better job of stimulating the sucking reflex in kids. If you are going to purchase a livestock nipple that does not have a hole in it already, you should buy several because it is very easy to cut a hole too large for a newborn. Cutting the opening on a nipple is not an exact science. It is best to make a very small opening initially. It can always be made bigger. If you accidentally make the opening too large, don’t throw the nipple away. You will probably be able to use it when the kid gets older. At some point, the nipples will start to deteriorate. When a nipple feels sticky, it is time to throw it away because it could fall apart and create a choking hazard for the kid.

  Goat Milk, Cow Milk, or Milk Replacer

  There is probably no question that will elicit more passionate responses from goat breeders than asking them what to feed kids, if goat milk is not available. Goat milk is definitely best, although some will argue that it should be pasteurized, and some will say it should be raw. If there is any doubt about the health status of your does, it should definitely be pasteurized, because several incurable diseases can be transmitted through the milk. However, raw milk contains antibodies not found in pasteurized milk or milk replacer. Every time I have fed kids anything other than raw goat milk, they wound up with coccidiosis at some point in the first couple of months. This is why most people who bottle-feed routinely will start kids on a coccidiostat at three weeks.

  Most breeders have had a bad experience with bottle-feeding at some point, and they blame whatever they were feeding. One website will advise feeding milk replacer, but another will claim that milk replacer kills kids, so you should feed cow milk. The bottom line is that when you are not feeding raw goat milk, there could be digestive disturbances that are caused by what you are feeding. In our early days of raising goats, when we didn’t have goat milk to feed bottle babies, we sometimes used store-bought cow milk, and sometimes we used milk replacer. The only time we had a tragic situation was when we fed a multi-species milk replacer. We happened to have a couple of bottle-fed piglets at the time, and it seemed easier to buy just one milk that would work for both the piglets and the doeling. The day after we opened a new bag of the milk replacer, both piglets and the doeling died, leading us to believe that the bag was contaminated.

  If you are unsure about the disease status of your does or if you are using colostrum or milk from does that have tested positive for diseases such as CAE, the milk should be pasteurized by heating it to 145°F for 30 minutes. Colostrum is heat-treated rather than pasteurized because it will turn into curdled pudding if heated up too much. Treat colostrum by heating it to 135°F for 60 minutes. Watch the thermometer carefully, as overheating denatures the proteins and can cause diarrhea in kids.

  If a doe dies before her kids are two months old, they really need to continue receiving milk from a bottle, which can be extremely challenging. Luckily we have only had to deal with this once. The triplets were a month old and had zero interest in taking a bottle. However, knowing that they needed the milk, I was not going to give up. For about a week, I struggled to pry open their mouths, put the nipple in, then hold their mouth shut and squeeze the bottle to get milk into them. After a few days, they started to suck a little, then a little more. By a week, they were opening their mouths and grabbing the bottle as if they’d been bottle-fed forever. I was really worried about them getting coccidiosis, but since their mother had been one of my top milkers, their weight gain had been above average before her death, and they weathered the transition well.

  Poop

  Newborn poop sometimes causes concern for goat owners. As with human babies, the first stool will be black and sticky. By the end of the first day, it will be the color of mustard or the yolk of a pastured hen’s egg. It may be the consistency of scrambled eggs or a little looser. If it looks like someone has squirted mustard on the back end of a kid in the first day or two, it means the kid is getting too much milk. We’ve had this happen a couple of times, and completely milking out the doe corrected the situation. A doe’s udder may be overly full by the time she kids, and if the doe is especially patient, she may allow a kid to nurse too long and overindulge. A streak or two of blood appearing in otherwise normal poop in the first few days is not a cause for concern.

  Feeding Grain and Forage

  When a kid is dam raised, it will imitate its mother and be nibbling at hay and grain within a few days of birth. When a kid is bottle-fed, it tends to start solid food much later, but you should provide hay by two weeks of age. Housing bottle-fed kids with other kids the same age may encourage them to start eating solid food sooner.

  Kids still need milk or milk replacer after they start eating solid foods. Early weaning can result in kids that grow slowly and are more sickly than those weaned later. Milk and milk replacers have far more protein and calcium than forage or grain. It simply isn’t possible for kids to get enough nutrients without milk until they are at least two months old.

  Horns

  I had failed to do my homework before bringing home my first goats. One of the unhappy surprises I had was learning that dairy goats are born with the ability to grow horns and that most dairy go
at breeders disbud kids to stop the horn growth. I was not happy about the prospect of burning my kids’ skulls for what I initially thought was merely a cosmetic issue. Then someone gave me two horned goats, and I quickly learned why so few people want horned goats. After three months, I called the person who had given me the goats and told her I couldn’t keep them.

  Goats with horns can be a danger to humans, other goats, and even to themselves. One day when my husband picked up one of the horned goats, it jerked its head backwards, barely missing my husband’s eye as the horn poked his cheek. When the horned goats butted heads with disbudded or polled goats, the horned goats had the advantage, and the goats without horns appeared to be in pain as they stumbled backwards. The final straw came when I saw the wether hook his horns under the belly of a pregnant doe and lift her off the ground. Horned goats are also notorious for getting their heads stuck in fencing, putting them at risk of a broken neck and making them easy targets for predators. We had a horned sheep break off a horn when he got it caught in a wooden fence, and a horned lamb got his horns caught in a fence and was eaten by a coyote.

  Heather Harris who blogs at The Homesteading Hippy had a horned goat for about three months, but after having multiple shirts and pants ripped by the horns, she finally decided to sell the goat. She was also concerned about the possibility of her four-year-old being hurt by the horns.

  Carol Inkster of Emo, Ontario, has had goats for 30 years but no longer has horned goats because of her experiences with them. In addition to goats getting their horns caught in fencing and one being severely injured after getting his horns tangled in electric fencing, a horned goat also injured her daughter because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A horn hit her daughter in the eye, hemorrhaging the eyeball and tearing the eyelid from the lashes to the brow.