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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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Kidding: After the Birth

So: your doe has finished kidding, she's pushed all the babies out, and they might be mostly dried off. What next? 

(Please note: I did cover some of this in passing in the "Kidding: Normal Birth" post, but I thought that a more involved, step-by-step guide might be helpful. Or at least, I think that's what I thought. I left a bunch of titles for posts in my "Drafts" folder, with no notes on what I wanted to put in the posts. So I'm just extrapolating. :)) 

There's a saying in the goat world: snip, dip, strip, sip. 

1. Cut or tear the umbilical cord, if it's long.

2. Dip it into iodine, or use an iodine swab to swab the cord and navel area

3. Gently strip the doe's teats to release the waxy plug that keeps bacteria from invading the teats before the kids are born. (OR if you're bottle feeding, milk the doe)

4. Start the kids nursing (OR give them a bottle). Ideally, they should have had their first drink of colostrum an hour or less after they're born. 

I'm going to talk more about #4 in the next post, on kid feeding. For right now, suffice it to say that kids will often get themselves nursing, but occasionally they need a bit of gentle guidance. 

After that, there are  a few more things to do:

1. Get the doe a bucket of warm water with a dollop of molasses in it. Does are often very thirsty after birth, and they will guzzle this right up.

2. Get the doe a batch of oatmeal. Yes, really! (You don't have to be as fastidious about making this oatmeal as you might have to be about making oatmeal for one of your children, for example. Just mix together some hot water and oats.) This is a nice treat for the doe, and stimulates milk production.

3. Once the doe passes the afterbirth (this might be as fast as a half-hour or less after the last kid was born, or as long as 12 hours after the last kid was born, which we've found is less common), she may eat it, or she may not. If she doesn't, you'll want to fish it out of the pen so the kids don't tangle themselves up in it or get dirty. At this point, you can also clean up the kidding pen a little--it gets kind of gross during birth!

4. Make sure the kids are all the way dried off! We find that, especially if it's cold (even in the 40 degree range), a hair dryer and/or a heating pad helps with this.

5. If, after they're all the way dry, the kids are shivering, we generally put kid coats on them. There are just pieces of sweatshirt sleeve cut short, with holes cut for legs. Generally, this is just necessary overnight (because our goats have so far kidded at night, mostly), but the one time we had a goat kid in February (in the snow, no less) we left them on a little longer.

6. At this point, generally the kids and mom and both generally tired enough that they go to sleep in a little goat heap (this is adorable), and you can go inside and get some well-earned sleep.

7. (Optional!) I will often volunteer to wake up every two hours and check on the kids and make sure they're nursing (IF you're bottle-feeding, you have to get up every two hours to bottle-feed. Sorry. :)). I think most people don't do that, but I'm a bit paranoid! If the kids are born during the day, obviously this is a little easier. :)

8. You'll probably want to weigh the kids--this can be done either right after birth, or the morning after. It's just good to get a baseline weight so that you can see if they're gaining correctly or not down the road. Plus, if your doe pushed out a bunch of huge babies, you can then brag about her. 

9. You might also want to get a calendar and mark down the basic dates that need to be remembered--when they need their first vaccines, when they'll be eight weeks, and any other routine tasks (which we'll be discussing later).

10. Enjoy the snuggles! 


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