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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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Pregnancy: Best Practices

 Other than feeding, there are only a few "extra" things you need to do during a goat's pregnancy.

  • Make sure to be supplementing for copper and selenium still. If you are using a selenium gel, give it every month. If you are using copper boluses, keep up your usual bolusing schedule. 
  • If the doe is in milk, dry her off at 3 month's gestation. This will give her 2 months to recuperate and prepare for new kids.
  • Give a CD&T shot one month beforehand (at 120 days gestation). This will ensure that those antibodies are passed to the kids through their mom's colostrum.
  • Assemble the kidding kit (we'll talk about this more in a future post) at around a month beforehand, to make sure you have time to order any supplies you need.
  • Six weeks before, we usually begin giving our goats THESE "birth prep" pill from Land of Havilah Farms.
  • Two weeks before, we usually start giving our goats supplemental vitamin E, in the form of 1000 IU gel capsules. We give these once per day. Some of our goats will just eat the capsules--for others, we have to open them and squirt the gel into their food.
  • On day 144 or 145, prep the kidding pen (we'll talk about this more in a future post, too!). In general, day 145 is the earliest they would be able to go, so you want to be ready! 
  • In addition, "crutch" the doe--shave her legs, tail, and the area around her nether region, to make it harder for things to stick to those areas. 
And that's it in terms of things you need to worry about during pregnancy! We'll talk a bit more about routine maintenance for the next few weeks, and then move on to kidding, kidding prep, and other topics in that vein. 

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