Gearing up for Kidding Season and my kidding kit

This is what I'd titled the previous post and realized I'd gotten way off track, when what I'd intended to write about was how I prepare for kidding season and what goes into my kidding kit/bucket.

First I will say that I think I've had the worst kidding luck of any goat owner I know. Was it the goats? My lack of knowledge and experience? Taking on too many goats while raising toddlers in the house? Who knows, but let's just sum it up by saying that in the last six years I have not had a kidding season where I have not had to "go in". I will follow that with saying that maybe I didn't always have to go in, but when you lose some kids because you didn't go in soon enough, you tend to try and prevent that the next time.

All of my kidding catastrophes have involved the kids not being in the correct position. In six years I have had two does kid with their first two bucklings upside down with their heads turned back alongside their body. The first time this happened the bucklings also had both legs tucked against their bodies and not sticking forward. The crazy thing is that I have been present for almost every kidding. I've missed one completely. I tend to jump the gun and pull all nighters only to have the doe kid the following afternoon when I'm so exhausted I just don't care about anything other than sleep.

I'm not going to go into all the kidding positions in this post - because Molly has already done so at her Fiasco Farm Site. So if you haven't checked those diagrams out and ready everything she's already written of preparing for kidding, you should. I do however, have a few things to say on the subject. If you are a newbie to goat kidding it is extremely difficult to know when to put a glove on, lube up and go in for an exploratory search. If you are like me, you'd rather let the doe do her thing and let nature take it's course. I've erred once or twice on waiting too long, one of the times' the doe actually got to the pushing stage, but wasn't making progress and started to weaken which is when we finally went in and at the time I had no idea what I was feeling (chest/ shoulder - no head or hooves) certainly hard to picture when you've never gone in before. So, if your doe gets to the pushing stage, they say the first kid should be out in 20-30 minutes, no more than 40. If she starts to weaken, you go in.

However, what if your doe never gets to the pushing, and never seems to weaken? Most will say to let her go, take her out and move her around etc. I ignored this advice when Zinnia's labor's were not progressing, and at least the second time, was glad I'd gone in when I did, or rather, wished I'd gone in earlier. If the kids are weak or dead when you go in, you probably waited to long - unless something else was wrong.

So, getting to my super simple kidding kit in order of priority:

1.  J Lube, a powdered lubricant that you can add to warm water and make the slipperiest lubricant ever. As much as I love the idea of olive oil with lavender essential oil - I am a fan of the J Lube results as I would have lost a doe and kid without it when olive oil didn't do the trick.  
2.  Towels (I use old bath towels, but clean rages or paper towels if you must).
3.  Scissors for the umbilical cord, if you don't snip it short sometimes the doe will chew on it and it can tear and bleed at the belly.
4. Goldenseal powder or an herbal antibacterial powder for the umbilical cord, notice I don't use iodine although most do. It makes a mess, plus anything you put on the kids umbilical cord gets wicked up into their little bodies - and Iodine in that form can be harmful.
5. Dental floss for tying kids umbilical cords - this is a common practice but I'm not sure it is necessary - I don't always do it - sometimes my fingers are too cold and numb. As long as the doe can't chew on the cord - and as long as you are there for the first few hours to keep an eye on dam and kid.
6. Latex glove for putting on if I "go in"
7. A lidded pint jar of vodka to sterilize my gloved hand in right before going in. I also have a betadine surgical scrub on hand but have never used it.
8. I also keep a couple clean lidded plastic containers on hand, one for warm water for lube and one for herbal tea to administer at the beginning of kidding and to put warm molasses water in for the doe after kidding to restore vitamins and trace minerals lost during kidding.
9. I keep cayenne powder and tincture on hand for weak kids. Rubbing the tincture into their gums and chest is supposed to help get their heart going in addition to giving them lots of vitamins.

If I have to "go in" and have a doe that had a particularly rough labor, I give some sort of immune support tincture twice to three times a day for the following three to five days. I give a hodgepodge of olive oil infused with raw garlic and cayenne along with various other herbs orally and into her uterus - or birth canal area - which gets wicked up into the uterus to prevent infection and stimulate healing and cleansing. Two drenching syringes are super helpful for this so that you don't have to wash them as much after using them on the back end. I suppose they should get washed between times anyway, but I guess I, ahem, haven't always...
 
That's about it, and again it is past my bedtime so I may be adding significant tidbits I've forgotten about later. As always I would love to hear about how your kidding season is going. Has anyone else noticed that there have hardly been any comments at all in a while? It is like I'm writing posts to nobody - except my blogger statistic thing says that over a hundred readers are reading my posts daily...weird.

Zinnia, weak uterus? toxemia and an herbal course of action

Today my husband worked on getting our kidding stall up and running; which entailed getting the surveillance camera up and running so that we can monitor whichever goat is in the stall from our bedroom (wake up, roll over, turn on portable dvd player and check out doe = way better than gearing up every couple hours and making the trek down the icy path and into the barn. For kidding season we start using a sliding pocket gate that goes unused the rest of the year. We also unscrew a board that blocks of the drafty back door to the goat barn so that the soon to be mother can have access to the outdoors on nice days and not be exposed to the rough and tumble hierarchy of the herd. As of yesterday there were three feet of snow and no paths in the back pen leading out from the kidding stall. Now thanks to D, there is a cleared patch of ground which will soon host a very pregnant doe and thereafter goat babies.

Zinnia is due on the twenty fifth of this month, which gives her eleven days to get ready to push out some kids. Unfortunately, this is a feat which she has not been able to accomplish on her own - yet. Zinnia's first year kidding she never got to the pushing stage but was in labor for a long time. I finally went in to see what was going on. She was dialated but the kids were far in. While I was in there I went ahead and pulled them out. She had two strong doelings. I didn't know if I had jumped the gun that year. Then, last year she had a similar long labor without much progress. This time when I went in the first kid had it's neck turned back on itself and he was upside down (which is the worst position ever!), and then the second buckling was in the same position as the first. Because they were upside down with no head I thought they were backwards and just pulled them out with all my might (oops. sorry Zin). But then it was good that I did, as they were not alive - or just barely but not enough that I could save them. Then I went back in and there was a doeling who was a little weak, but she made it - yeah, Clary Sage.

So, for her second kidding again the kids had been deep in and not coming out on their own - but it was hard to know if their lame position had something to do with it. So, the vet says that in older does sometimes they have a condition where their uterus is not strong enough to push the kids out. Maybe this is Zinnia's problem as well. Because of this I have not felt like I could sell her without a full disclaimer - which is why I am giving her one more chance.

I do not expect her to do all the work by herself, so I had/have a plan I'm trying to be good at following. Starting about eight weeks before her due date I started feeding her a large handful of wild red raspberry leaves with her morning grain- which is a uterine strengthening and toning herb. I also got some Partridgeberry tincture from an herbalist friend of mine, which I've started feeding 2-3 dropperfuls twice a day (supposed to be three times a day) which I plan on continuing up until she is in labor. The other herb which I just started feeding yesterday is Black Cohosh. I already had it around the house is dried form - otherwise I'd read that it is more effective in tincture form. But I made it into a tea and am also drenching her with that twice a day. These last two herbs are both supposed to help strengthen uterine contractions while in labor. I believe that they are not recommended for women until the last three weeks - and I chose to start Zinnia on these thirteen days before her due date - as she usually kids early anyway.

 For the last week she has been not real interested in her herbs nor her grain or alfalfa. As she is a fine boned, fairly heavy producing doe who tends to have multiple kids I was worried she may be in the early stages of pregnancy toxemia so I gave her about 50cc's of our warm raw honey, followed by 20-30cc's a few times a day for the next day. Fortunately I had purchased Fir Meadow's herbal keto mix last kiddding season to have on hand for emergencies. It is a blend of herbs which are to be used after the doe has a significant amount of sugar in her body, and the purpose is to help cleanse the body and get rid of the toxins she is processing which are making her feel nauseous and go off her feed. Today she ate most of her grain and was eating her alfalfa tonight - which she didn't touch two nights ago. Hopefully we are back on track.

Now I'm drenching Zinnia twice daily with a mixture of raw honey, red raspberry leaf and black cohosh tea, combined equally with the keto mix and then with a big splash of the partridgeberry tincture. Hopefully all that will help and my lack of measuring and combining will not cause more harm than good.

The end goal is that Zinnia will push her kids out on her own in a timely fashion. The challenge will be knowing when to intervene and when to sit back and let her do her thing.