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.

Dead chickens

In the last six days three of our laying hens have died. Every time we've had a chicken die, I've noticed symptoms within a few to twenty-four hours, and so far have never saved a symptomatic chicken. The bummer about a sick chicken is that you can't just kill it and eat it because who knows what it has. If you give it commercial antibiotics there is a thirty day period where you can't eat the eggs. Usually when people give antibiotics they administer it via water to their whole flock, possibly as a preventative, which means all eggs go in the trash for a month which makes antibiotics a last measure for me. So what do you do when you spot a sick chicken? Panic. This time I filled a rubermaid storage container with hay and a waterer and feeder and brought the bird into our entryway so I could keep an eye on it. The bird only lasted a few hours after I brought it inside. The only information I gleaned from the bird was that it's poops were dry like damp sawdust, there was no coughing or cold symptoms, no external wounds, no lacerations or swelling in the feet or elsewhere. I was hoping that it was a fluke, but when the second bird appeared listless I got pretty worried. In the future I may try to do an autopsy and check out its stomach and respiratory system to see if there is anything odd, but just not there yet.

Antibiotics only treat bacterial infections. There are many chicken diseases that are caused by viruses, that are only preventable by vaccination. The measures that I take for sick chickens is to give them immune boosting herbs, make sure their living conditions are clean and dry, and give them some herbs that contain antibacterial and antifungal properties. So as soon as we had a sick bird I studied our flock... and noticed nothing, primarily no diarhea and no cold symptoms. Then a put some crushed garlic, goldenseal root tincture (antibiotic) and echinacea root tincture ( immune booster) into their communal waterer. I have since done some research on goldenseal and realized that it is more effective as a topical antibiotic. So today I put a couple drops of grapefruit seed extract (antibiotic) and tea tree essential oil (antifungal and antibiotic properties) into their water. I also dosed their food up with an herbal wormer that I give all the animals to maintain parasite loads. I think if the chickens had coccidiosis I would see runny or bloody poops, but it can't do any harm. That is the nice thing about most herbs, as long as they are used for short term treatment, they are generally safe to use. I have researched using these remedies and frequently treat family and animals with them...but am always learning more as in the case of the goldenseal. 

No birds have died since Sunday night, and as of today all look chipper. So I'm hoping to loose no one else. I think it is interesting that of the birds that died one was a standard cornish hen and two were our black sexlink hens (hybrid layers). None of our pure-bred hardy Brahmas or Americanas showed symptoms. We are down to nine layers and two roosters. I guess we'll have room in the coop for more younguns now. I tend to think that my birds are healthier than the average chicken due to their spacious indoor quarters and daily outdoor time, vegetable scraps and as of recently whole foods diet...however, I think I will be more cautious of keeping their feed covered and their coop cleaner. As a side note I can't help but think that I've just recently been transitioning their diet from crumbles to whole grains and supplements. I'm going to do some more research but I can't think of any reason this would have caused death. The birds get plenty of grit and oyster shell to help them digest whole grains. But the timing is certainly suspicious..hm well till next time, goodnight.