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.

Doelings, pros and cons of early breeding

Here are some pictures of our two doelings. These pictures were taken last June. Nia (short for Zinnia) is on the ground and Zuri is on the platform. I am looking forward to kidding season. Unfortunately ours is a long time off, so I've been going back and looking at pictures from last spring. You can view Nia's birth here, and Zuri's birth here.

 

Both photos above and below are of Zuri. When she was born she was bigger than Nia, even though she was a couple weeks younger. Nia and her mother are both smaller and more petite, whereas Maggie was my tallest, longest and strongest doe. However, since losing Maggie, Zuri has slowed down and now Nia is a good bit larger. I shouldn't be surprised, as Nia at eight months old has had several more months of nursing than her counterpart. As orphan of the group, Zuri is our most affectionate doeling yet. She has a special place in my heart. 

I naively envisioned our goat kids romping on green pasture in their early days, even though we've never had pasture to begin with. I thought to make their start in life more pleasant we'd breed to kid in late spring when it is warmer and more pleasant to be outside. Going into our third kidding season my goals have changed and I would prefer to stagger our breeding over the course of a few months, beginning in February and finishing up in April. Well, despite my best intentions all three of our senior does are due to kid in April. Here are the pros and and cons for us when it comes to early vs. late breeding.

Cons of early kidding:

1. It is cold. Need heatlamps. 
2. Kids spend a lot of their time indoors and goat housing is extra crowded.
   

Pros of early kidding: 

1. Early doelings have a better chance of growing large enough that they may possibly (depending on many factors) be able to be bred their first year. 
2. Early boys have a better chance of being able to breed if they are bucklings, or if they are whethered males, might actually be large enough in late fall, early winter to be killed for their meat. Dairy goats are not very meaty, but there is a big difference in a seven vs. eleven month kid.
3. In our case we have more summer facilities than winter. So weaning would be an easier matter in the fall before we need insulated shelters and heated waterers. 
4. February is a rather uneventful month here whereas May is extremely busy. After kids are born, a number of chores follow such as disbudding, tatooing and whethering. It would be nice to have all these initial practices finished by the time we are dealing with chicks and a garden to put in. 

Finally, it would be nice to stagger breeding so that we are never without a fresh milk supply. We have dried off does when they were first bred, and we've done it about half way through their five month gestation period. This year we were hoping to breed five does, but we lost one, and then our yearling has been tricky to catch in heat. So I decided to breed all three senior does, two of whom are in milk. Xoe has slowed down enough that I've stopped milking her as of the last week. Rose, however, is still nursing her daughter Nia. So it seems as though either we get the milk, or Nia gets it. I have been milking just a couple times a week in an attempt to dry her off, but with her daughter nursing as much as she is I don't see her drying off anytime soon. I do have a freezer full of milk and a couple bags of frozen chevre. But I start to panic at the idea of not having fresh milk for the next three months. It would be nice to avoid this issue by either staggering breeding, or not needing to breed everyone yearly. Next year I think we will try milking one doe straight through and not breeding her at all.

 

Meanwhile, I feel good about keeping Zuri and Nia as dry yearlings. There is much controversy in the goat world over this issue. My first hand experience was with four doelings who were about nine to eleven months when I first bred them. I had weighed them and supposedly they had "made weight". Well our two larger framed does had no issues, but our two more petite does both had some stress to their front legs. I ended up wrapping their front legs during their final weeks of gestation as they were hobbling around and their legs were starting to give out under their weight. Kidding resolved the leg issues.

I've also noticed that one of our does who escaped breeding last year has moved from last place in the group to most dominate doe. She is much more robust than the does who have been bred every year. Our first doeling, Yin, remained dry her first year and is now larger than her mother (who she still tries to nurse off of). This being said, it is not always easy to refrain from breeding a doe who you know is in heat. I can be torn between my desire for more milk and kids, and what I know would be the better decision for a doe's health.  From a financial standpoint, waiting until their second year is a long time to feed them and seems forever till we'll get to see them freshen and produce kids and milk. When we have early kids I may try and breed them their first year but it just depends on how they look. For now, as long as we have late kids they will remain dry their first year.

Xoe

Xoe is on my mind. She is a darling goat. I feel for her right now, because in the not all too distant past I was expecting myself. Unlike Xoe, I am not a goat - thankfully, and so I was not picked on, pushed around and butted by my peers. The gestation period for goats is about 150 days, but it is wise to start checking for labor signs a good week before. Often they'll give birth five or so days early or late. Last year we were expecting Maggie to kid first, but Rose; the third doe we'd bred kidded first. Maggie kidded late, everyone else was more or less right on time. Xoe kidded to twins last year on April thirteenth- (Noah's birthday). As you can tell from the following pictures, Xoe is very pregnant and starting to have a hard time getting around. The other does are starting to pick on her and take advantage of her weakness. They aren't mean really, this is just what goats do, no matter how sweet of a goat they are it is in their nature to establish their rank in the herd and try to move up if they can.

We bred Xoe for the first time in December 07 and at the time she was our youngest goat bred, just seven months old. She was a big healthy kid who was at least ninety pounds by the time we bred her. When breeding goats their first time, I believe they are suppose to be at least eighty pounds. Well, I know now from experience that I probably bred Xoe too early. When she was about a month from kidding her front right leg started giving out at the ankle when she put pressure on it. I had to wrap her front two legs to give her extra support so that she could walk. She did kid to twins, but if she had been a few months older I don't think it would have been an issue.
When Xoe kidded for the first time, she was totally out of it and was completely disinterested in her kids. We tried to put her in a small pen with them thinking she would come around, but that made it worse. So we ended up keeping her kids in a kennel together and every couple hours we would go up and hold Xoe so that her kids could nurse without her butting them into the ground. She was really rough and mean to them. Thankfully after about a week of this we starting letting them hang out for supervised visits and within a few more days she was taking to them just fine. I was glad that we hadn't given in and just started bottle feeding. Today Xoe's daughter Yin enjoys the position of adolescent dilinquent within the herd. She and her mother are very close. I am not sure when Xoe finally cut Yin off, as far as nursing goes, but I am certain that she is no longer nursing. Xoe's udder has been empty for a month or so and has started bagging up over the last few days. It will be interesting to see how Yin treats her new siblings. Jealousy issues? Sibling rivalry?

Xoe is due to kid on April ninth. I predict that she will take to her kids just fine her second time around. And I feel certain in saying that there has got to be at least two in there. Xoe is sweet and eager to please. Before she kidded the first time she had been second in the herd. Now she is close to last. I would like to make sure she is dried off by September and then give her a few months to grow before we breed her again in late winter next year. Goats do not reach their full size until they are about three years old. So I'd like to give her some baby free time by late summer / early fall.

We would like to keep everyone's first daughter. We would also like to restrict ourselves to two doelings a year. This is going to be a challenging decision this year, as it would be so interesting to keep Xoe's daughter (if she has one), because we bred her to Xavier instead of Lew this year. So it would be a while but possibly by next spring we could be comparing Yin, (Lew's daughter), to her half sister,(Xavier's daughter). I am most interested in seeing how their udders differ in size, shape and teat placement. We have four does kidding, they are most likely to have two kids each. There is a good chance that we end up with multiple doelings. Hopefully we will, because this is the only way we can make money off of our goats at this time- selling kids. There is much more demand for doelings than bucks. I plan on selling doelings for around three hundred dollars. So if we could sell a couple that would certainly help pay for feed costs. Anyways...for now I'm mostly thinking of Xoe and when she is going to surprise us with our first kids of the year.