In Good Company

Kidding season is in full swing! With the school quarter beginning to come to a close, UC Davis Field Day coming up next Saturday (more on that later), and 7 does due in the next 7 days, I decided several weeks ago to induce does to kid this weekend so that I could focus on other things in the coming week. One doe kidded early, and three of the does are still less than 146 days along (a normal goat pregnancy lasts ~150 days, and successfully inducing does to have *live* kids works best if they're at least 144 days pregnant - I prefer to wait a few days more so that the kids don't arrive too underbaked). That left three does to kid today - Fantasia, Trooper and Meadowlark.

Inducing usually results in kids being born between 11 AM and 3 PM, although there are the occasional exceptions. I wasn't sure whether Fantasia would wait, as she's always been a rather secretive kidder, and sure enough, she presented me with a lovely pair of clean, dry kids at 8:30 this morning:

Fantasia's twins - the doe, Johanna, is the one with her head up.

While I was glad that she had kidded quickly and with no problems, I was a little concerned because I had invited a few friends from school to come watch, and I was worried that the kids would all be born before anyone was able to get here! Thankfully, however, the other two does took their sweet time, and after everyone arrived and settled in to wait, there were plenty of snacks to eat and older babies to cuddle.

Haley and Katie make some new friends!

Both does were looking equally uncomfortable, but Lark was the first to throw in the towel (with much talking and attempted licking from Trooper, next door). She had a pretty white doe kid and a Sable buck kid with a really impressive grey "skunk stripe" and wattles.

Merganser, Lark's doe kid

Lark's buck kid. Sorry for the bad lighting, but check out that color!

Not to be outdone, Trooper decided to kid shortly after. She was bred to Rigsby, so I was expecting elf eared 1/2 LaMancha kids, but with the other half Saanen I was resigned to white kids (or light brown at best). Imagine my surprise when this little beauty showed up!

Lisbon, Trooper's doe kid - so pretty!

One of the reasons I've always had Saanens is so that I wouldn't make breeding and selection decisions based on color. Given how smitten I am with miss Lisbon, it's a good thing I didn't start breeding LaManchas sooner, or I'd have twice as many goats as I do now!

When half an hour had gone by without so much as a peep from Trooper, I started to get concerned. I knew there was at least one more kid in there, so I put an OB glove on and went in to investigate. (The second of such gloves - I popped the first one, trying to turn it inside out so as not to expose her to the dirty outside of the glove.) I'm glad I checked when I did - the second kid had his head firmly tucked back against his rib cage, and he was NOT turning it around, thank-you-very-much. 15 minutes and one bruised arm later, I managed to get him straightened out and delivered - thankfully, still alive.

Trooper's two kids. I'm not sure what Lisbon is trying to do.

With all of the kids on the ground, it was time to get the does some warm electrolyte water and kick back for the rest of the afternoon. I did, however, check on everyone a few hours later, to be greeted by Lisbon from her eyeball-deep nest of straw....

IT'S SO FLUFFY!!

I do believe she's going to be a bit spoiled.

Kidding Season Ups and Downs

(Alternatively, Saanens versus LaManchas.)

Kidding season usually has highs and lows. Kind of a 'you win some, you lose some' deal. Last year was particularly bad, with all but three of the 22 kids from the two-year-old does dying from Floppy Kid Syndrome. Floppy kid is a metabolic disease associated with a secondary bacterial infection - in last year's case, Cryptosporidium. However, last year was also one of the best for kid growth and I have some beautiful yearlings in the barn right now.

10 does have kidded so far this year, and it's been quite the roller coaster ride. Two of them were unplanned - the result of does getting bred by a very young buckling who hadn't yet been moved to the buck pen. Here's the breakdown:
Lily (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (doe was stillborn)
Kolea (Saanen) - twin does
Sitka (LM cross, not intentionally bred) - one slightly retarded buck kid
Reina (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (buck was stillborn)
Panda (Saanen cross) - twin does
Cristal (Saanen cross, not intentionally bred) - twin bucks, both with parrotmouths
Emma (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (doe stillborn, and she laid on the buck kid and killed it)
Stella (LM) - twin bucks
Kitten (Saanen) - buck/doe twins
Dreamer (Saanen) - giant single buck

Is anyone else noticing a trend here?

Cristal can be forgiven for the parrotmouths - she IS a very old doe, and older mamas tend to have kids with congenital issues. If that is the only thing wrong with these two boys I'll be happy, especially since her last kid was a cryptorchid with extra teats and a furry eye. However, the fact that only half of the kids from the LaMancha does have survived makes me wonder if I'm really meant to have LaManchas. Then again, Kitten was bred to a LaMancha buck, so her kids are LaMancha crosses, and they are two of the biggest, coolest, most curious little buggers I've ever seen. Go figure.

Learning curve

Dear God:
I just wanted to say thanks for the education I've been getting. I never knew just how little sleep I could get and still be a coherent being. Please help me remember to be careful what I wish for...while it was fascinating to see, it didn't occur to me that a gastroschisis kid would cause so many problems. If it's not too much to ask, though, I would be very grateful if the next doe who kids could be excluded from this learning experience - you see, I've almost forgotten what a normal kidding is like. Amen.

And so it begins

Once again, it's been way too long since my last post. However, I've realized that a large factor contributing to my lack of postage is a conviction that every post requires photos. Obviously, they don't. SO.

Since December, we've had a few more bottle babies show up, a fantastic Christmas, and a lot of pregnant bellies! A few, such as Trooper, are wider than they are tall (and Trooper isn't due until March). It's always fascinating to me to watch them grow and see who starts to "show" at what time, and then later to see how many kids were really in there. Emma, for example, is due in less than two weeks and has only just started to develop a suggestion of roundness around her middle, while Kolea (who is due in 5 days) can barely fit through the gate anymore. Fantasia has a big sound frame and tends to carry kids inconspicuously until a few days before her due date, and Violet is the same shape no matter what stage of gestation (or lactation) she's in - I think she does it on purpose, she's just that perverse. Then there are goats like Atlanta, who dropped her belly and started waddling instead of walking a mere two weeks after she got bred.

In the past few years, we've struggled with kids getting sick at a very young age - last year nearly all of the kids from the two-year-old does died from Floppy Kid Syndrome, due to complications with Cryptosporidium, and a few years ago we had some bad cases of E. Coli. scours. So, this year I went overboard with kid prep - we bought new panels and hardware, cleaned a section of the barn, drenched it in bleach, limed the floor - you name it, we did it. We're hoping that having the kids born in the clean pens will keep the new babies healthy and happy while their immune systems are getting their acts together.

The first pens were finished just in time, too - Lily suddenly (and rather impressively) filled her udder yesterday, so I knew she was close to kidding. Even though her due date wasn't until the 9th, she kidded this morning with a gorgeous set of twins! Unfortunately the doe kid was stillborn, but the buckling is adorable and doing quite well. Lily did the exact same thing last year (kidding early with a live buck and a dead doe) so I was a little disappointed, but these things happen. At least she and the remaining kid are doing well.

The next few kiddings are going to be interesting - Panda, a three-year-old who nearly died last year from gangrenous mastitis and lost her udder as a result, is due on the 9th and she is HUGE. It will be a challenge to predict her kidding without an udder; while it's by no means the only indicator of impending birth, "bagging up" (the udder filling with milk) is the most obvious sign of kidding and I tend to rely on it pretty heavily. Kolea, as mentioned previously, is also quite wide, and will actually be getting shots tonight to induce her into labor a few days early. Inducing labor has its pros and cons: it requires that the does kid a few days before their due dates, which can result in slightly underbaked kids, but one of the shots (Dexamethasone) is a corticoid and helps the babies' lungs finish developing before they're born, and being able to schedule kiddings so that I can be present in case of complications greatly reduces my stress load. Often it reduces the doe's stress level as well - I hand-raised the majority of my goats, and most of them get very anxious if I leave them while they're kidding. (Some do everything in their power to kid while I'm NOT there, but that's beside the point.) Kolea is a first-time mother; she's inexperienced, she's VERY wide which makes me think she's expecting multiple kids, and she's bred to a buck who tends to produce very large babies. Very big kids can cause problems, even if they don't get tangled up and the doe isn't a first-timer, so I'm hoping that kidding a couple of days early will keep her from growing her kids overly large. So, just to make sure she doesn't have problems with babies getting tangled up or stuck on their way out, and to ensure that the babies get cared for, dried off and fed once they arrive, I want to be there when she kids. Ergo, she gets induced.

With kidding also comes milking, however, and since Lily could easily feed three kids and only has one, I'm off to take up the slack...