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Kids: Coccidia

Coccidia are a protozoan internal parasite, that most goats have, in small numbers. In adults, this is generally not a problem, but if kids get an overload of coccidia, it can cause diarrhea, intestinal scarring, and ultimately death, if not treated.  The first line of prevention for coccidia in kids is to keep their areas clean. This may seem like an unreasonable expectation--it's a barn, for all love--but what this means is essentially making sure the kids have minimal access to poop--they pick up coccidia from mouthing poop, soiled straw, etc. This can mean cleaning out the pen every day, or it can mean adding a new layer of straw once or twice a day, or even both. A good criteria (picked up from Deborah at the Thrifty Homesteader) is that you should be willing to sit down in the stall. Then, it's clean enough for kids. If you're not willing to sit down (while wearing "barn" pants. Not wearing a fancy dress, for instance) it's not clean enough for kids.  In...
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Goat Vocab

 Hi Legolas! Just a quick refresh on goat terminology, for reference, or for anyone else who's reading this.

Doe: female goat
Doeling: young female goat
Buck: male goat
Buckling: young male goat
Yearling: year-old goat of either gender
Wether: fixed (castrated) male goat
Heat: The time of month when a female goat is fertile
LA: Linear Appraisal, a goat evaluation program
DHI: Dairy Herd Improvement, a milk production evaluation program
Sire: father
Dam: mother
Breeding season: the time when goats are fertile, i.e. fall-spring
Buck cloth: a cloth that has been rubbed on a buck so it takes on a bucky scent. 
Cull: remove from the herd
Line bred: a goat who has distantly related parents
Inbred: a goat who has closely related parents
Freshening: giving birth and coming into milk
In heat: A female goat who is fertile
Settled: pregnant
Open: not pregnat
Flagging: wagging her tail back and forth; a sign of heat
Rut: The time in which a male goat is fertile (i.e. all breeding season. It's a state of being)
Standing heat: The time during heat in which the doe is receptive to the buck
Cud: undigested food that the goat chews to further digest it
Disbud: to burn off a kid's horn buds so it doesn't grow horns
Dry: not in milk
Polled: naturally hornless
Scurs: strange and contorted horns that can grow after disbudding
AI: artificial insemination; artificially making a goat pregnant
ADGA: American Dairy Goat Association
AGS: American Goat Society
Wattles: the little things that hang off some goats' necks
Rump: a goat's rear end
Hock: the bottom part of a goat's leg
Withers: shoulders
Muzzle: mouth, front of face
Topline: the line from a goat's withers to its rump; i.e. it's back
Medial: the ligament that divides the two halves of a goat's udder
Orifice: the hole in a goat's teat
Rumen: first stomach
Reticulum: second stomach
Omasum: third stomach
Abomasum: true stomach
Drenching: giving a goat liquid medicine orally
Bolusing: giving a goat a pill orally
Elastration: castrating a goat with elastrator bands (i.e. thick rubber bands)
Flushing: feeding a goat extra before breeding to hopefully make her have more babies
Grade: an unregistered goat
Driveway breeding: bringing a doe and buck together to breed when the doe is in heat
Pen breeding: leaving a doe and buck together for a month and hoping they breed
Hermaphrodite: a goat that has characteristics of both genders
Homozygous: having two of the same gene
Horn buds: the little horny nubs on a kid's head that will grow into horns
Milking through: continuing to milk a goat for more than 10 months
Overconditoned: fat
Underconditioned: thin
Registered: having a pedigree issued from either ADGA or AGS
Colustrum: a doe's first, highly nutritious, milk

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