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Kid-watch

7K views 35 replies 11 participants last post by  Bondre 
#1 · (Edited)
Our goats are in the final stages of gestation at present, and what with all the foaling threads at this time of year, I thought why not have a kidding thread too?

The most advanced of them are at that stage when they resemble zeppelins on legs and spend most of their time lying down and groaning quietly, looking like beached whales. We put the males in at the beginning of December, meaning that they aren't due until the end of this month, but I reckon we could see an early kid by this weekend. The goats that have multiple gestations (most of them) kid earlier than the single mothers (ie: carrying one kid, they're all single as in unmarried lol).

To add another variable to the equation, this year we crossbred forty of our goats with males of a larger breed. Our goats are all Murcianas, a small dairy breed, and we have crossbred with Florida males (not from Florida, literally means "flowery" because of their splashy markings). So the unfortunate forty are carrying XXL kids which means they are even heavier and clumsier than in normal circumstances. The goats with yellow collars in the pics are the Florida wives. Spot the extra big bellies!

So, who will kid first?? (Out of nearly two hundred candidates).


Will it be 54811? (or her friend who looks as if she's got a wasp in her mouth)


Or pretty blonde 72985?


30844 has a spectacular belly on her.


But 76382 is even wider.


76404 is not amused....


and she waddles for cover.


While these three pregnant beauties compare bellies and udders. The two on the right (both Florida girls) are already showing udder development and starting to produce colostrum.

Place your bets everyone! Sorry about the lack of names for identifying them. We only have pet names for a few of our 300 goats - and some of the names aren't suitable for a family forum.... let's just say that not all of the goats stand out because of their GOOD qualities.

Nearly forgot to include the flowery guys ;-)


Here they are doing their job back in December.
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#3 ·
Seen a lot of kids being born but they normally just slither to the ground. Nothing explosive. The emissions after kidding can be explosive though; if the goat coughs when you're milking her you don't want to be in the way of the icky brown gunk that she might shoot out. :shock:

The goats are quite considerate and mostly kid between 10am and 9pm. There's always a few that kid early or late but we don't have to be on top of them unless they look like they're having problems. The vast majority do the job just fine on their own. We only intervene if there's a goat that's obviously in labour but hasn't produced anything. Could be twins that are jostling to be first into the birth canal, or a breech birth, or just a lazy goat that doesn't want to push because she knows it's going to be painful.

The worst thing that can happen when a bunch of goats kid behind your back is that they all mix their kids up. Some goats will look for a quiet corner, but others search out someone else's newborn kids when they feel the contractions, and start licking them clean while they're waiting to give birth themselves. Then you have a huge muddle of who belongs to whom, some kids with two or three mothers and others with none.
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#8 ·
Thanks, CrossCountry! The two weeks before the due date are always the worst. Some of them have serious problems with keeping all their innards inside when the kids are occupying all that space. We have to sow up a few rear orifices every year to help the mothers keep all their private bits inside where they belong. It's a huge relief for us when those goats deliver safely - and even more of a relief for them, I'm sure.

Natisha, the harness things are to stop them suckling from their own udders. Goats that drink their own milk are a problem when they are stabled, like ours, and don't have a very active lifestyle. They start by chance, when they're scratching their teats, and once they've tasted the milk they're hooked.
Unfortunately they also seem to learn the trick by example, so if you've got a couple of goats that know the secret, soon you'll have a couple of dozen.

With the harnesses, they can't bend so far round to reach their teats but otherwise they can lead a fairly normal life.
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#10 ·
I don't even want to take a guess, unless I can say they are all going see earth within minutes or hours of each other, lol

There was a "goat blurp" on the local news about a family who had 100 kids born and they were asking for volunteers to come and handle/imprint the kids every day.

They raise milk goats and make cheese. They said it's a lot easier to milk if the goats have been handled from birth but with 100 new kids even their regular employees can't keep up.

That wasn't you was it, lollol

EDITED to add:

I like the one sticking her tongue out.

When on earth do you have time to ride! The goats are your money makers, so I know you've got to be keeping a diligent eye on them, even if they do the bulk of the birthing without you. That is a LOT of butts to check for needing stitches <where's the passing out emoticon>

I tip my hat to you ----- and I thought dairy cattle were a handful-------
 
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#11 ·
Interesting about the imprinting, and they're right, the hand-reared kids are much easier to handle as adults. We don't imprint, it would be impossible with the sheer volume of kids in the main kidding season.

It all starts nice ands relaxed: yippee! The first kid! Make sure he's comfortable, treated like royalty. After 20 kids you get a bit more blasé, and on the peak kidding days (40-50 popping out daily) you start feeling that your entire existence is reduced to the goat stables. What, there's still a world out there?? And other folks are going out for a beer right now???

In two weeks it's all over and done with, and you're left with the "orphan" kids (who ended up without a mother in the chaos) to hand-raise.

The butts - they stand out a mile if they have problems, not hard to spot. Do cattle not have this problem? Seems like domestic goats are badly- proportioned, (or at least this breed), not enough belly for what they need to fit inside.

Yep, the horses get their holidays when the goats are kidding. I must admit they've been having too many holidays recently. They're not complaining anyway ;-)
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#12 ·
Egrogan, we'll be keeping all the crossbred flowery females, though none of the males. Breeding males should always be purebred. And the bulk of the murciana kids are heading off for greener pastures too.
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#14 ·
Yes, that would certainly help. Unfortunately our stabling isn't really designed for breaking into small pens, as the enclosed groups wouldn't have access to the outside patio, which is their preferred spot for sunbathing.

Our solution is to tie the kids in pairs at intervals along the walls for the first few days of life. They have 1m of twine and a homemade wooden thing (a short slat with three holes) that is designed to keep them untangled. The idea is to prevent them from wandering off and getting lost. After two or three days they have established a pair bond with their mother and can be set free with a reasonable guarantee of success.

Sadly the kid market is so low at present that it's barely profitable to raise the males with their mothers. Virtually all dairy goat farmers here raise the kids on milk substitute with a robot suckler. We are still doing things the old way and raising them on real milk but we will have to modernize very soon. Better not get started on the economics of kids though....
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#16 ·
Photos of your girls, MyBoySi?...

What sort of cheese do you make? I make queso fresco (literally fresh cheese) from time to time, and the family wolfs it down. I made goats' milk soap one year too; great stuff, and lasts longer than the cheese.

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#17 ·
In my old age, I feel I have earned the right to bath with nothing but goat milk soap. It does wonders for the environmental allergy itchies that I didn't used to have:icon_rolleyes:

My favorite on-line source is "Two Old Goats". I love their arthritis hand cream.

Right now I have goat milk soap from Duluth. The soap bars are bigger than those from "Two Old Goats" but I don't like it as much. I still have several bars to use up because, I buy a lot at one time so I don't have to keep re-ordering. I'm sorry I did, this time. <shakes head>

Bondre, we stopped dairy farming and leased the farm out by the time I was 12, so I don't remember much about the birthing part of the operation. We only had a couple dozen dairy cattle back then, so I'm sure dad was able to keep a close eye on them. We were very poor and losing a cow or calf during birthing would have hit the finances pretty hard.
 
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#18 ·
Well, looks like I started this thread just in time.

This evening we fed the goats and all normal, then I went down to the horses and took them out to hand graze for an hour. On my return, I heard a high-pitched bleating from the goat yard.

Turns out one of the young females had just kidded. The kid was still wet and lying down. It doesn't really count in the kidwatch because the group of young goats have no official due date (they had a resident Florida billy with them for several months). But WTH, it's the first kid, it's spotty and it's CUTE.



And what do you know, half an hour after producing the first kid, she went and popped out another. Amazing! We are talking a small, one-year goat, with two sizeable kids. Honestly don't know where she hid them. No wonder she's been looking a bit delicate and fed up for the past week.
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#21 ·
Here is where I would get in trouble, trying to raise something for profit, lol

Knowing her story and given her age, I would separate her and the babies and make pets out of them. Baby and the babies would live in the lap of goat luxury for the rest of their lives, lol

This is OT but a neighbor down the road has alpacas. My favorite time of year to see them is now because they have all been sheared and look like cute stick people, lol

She leaves the below-the-knee hair in tact but they are sheared right down to a crew cut everywhere else ---- cute cute cute:)
 
#22 ·
I have two, just mostly for our own milk. My yearling had two kids too!
They are also big in comparison to the other goats three kids. It makes sense though as she is a flying goat and I can't keep her separated from the kids at night unless I put them in the horse trailer, so they really get double the milk. Of course they turned into flying kids...
 
#24 · (Edited)
The goats are slow and dreamy, enjoying the warm spring weather. No more kids yet, though 54788 is looking a good contender for the first prize:



Here they are enjoying a treat of giant thistles. Sooo painful to even think of putting that in your mouth.



And goats being goats, where do they stand? On top of their lunch, naturally (though the pregnant ladies aren't leaving the ground in a hurry).

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#26 · (Edited)
Walkin, the "baggage" keeps expanding but still no kids. You're right about it hurting to look at them, poor things, I wear a pained look every time I go into the yard.

We've got a few cases of gestational toxemia. This usually happens to a couple of goats when they're far advanced - it's a metabolic problem caused by an glucose imbalance. When they're approaching kidding their appetites are greatly reduced - not much room in those giant bellies for food - whereas their need of blood glucose to supply the kids is at a maximum. Solution: the liver starts metabolising glycogen which produces undesirable byproducts (acetone). Typical symptoms are swollen lower legs, especially the pasterns (do goats have pasterns lol?), and the goat spends most of her time lying down as it's obviously uncomfortable for them to remain on their feet. It can be a terminal condition in severe cases - but we have only had one fatality from this in our twelve years with the goats.

Once we see swollen ankles we dose the sufferers with propylene glycol which supplies their glucose needs safely, and that is enough to pull them through until they kid, when they recover their appetite ands rapidly readjust their metabolisms. Catching them to give them their medicine would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic - they try to run off but are physically incapable. I had a race with one sufferer this afternoon typo catch her, which I won at a fast walk, while she was slower than me waddling at her top speed.... I always tell them that they're not in shape for those sorts of antics, but they don't listen to me. However, I think the propylene glycol doesn't taste bad because after a couple of days tasking it they stop trying to run away when they see me coming with the bottle, and one year we had a goat that would waddle towards me for her dose rather than "running" away.


^^^ Poor 76378 looks so uncomfortable - she is suffering from toxemia. Not surprising loading that the outside belly.

.
^^^ 72994 is extremely heavy, and has a generous udder. She could go very soon I think. She's not one for filling up days in advance normally - we do have some goats that are dragging around full udders for over a week before they kid - but she isn't one of them. We'll see what tomorrow brings....
 
#27 ·
I don't know what the admins did but now the like button doesn't work in classic or I would have liked ^^^^^

With all the toxemia and glucose issues, do the goats founder like a horse with insulin resistance?
 
#29 ·
From what I've read, goats can technically founder...but they're much more stoic to the pain than horses and it's pretty hard to founder them in the first place. So even if they did manage to founder, you might never notice - they might never show a lick of lameness!

Here's a link: Laminitis / Founder


Anyway, cute new babies, Bondre!! :loveshower::loveshower::loveshower:
 
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