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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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Kids: Feeding

There are essentially two routes to go for feeding kids: bottle feeding, and dam raising. 

There are a number of arguments for bottle feeding (a certain amount of convenience, easier to train FFs to the milk stand, tamer kids), but we actually find that dam raising is easier for our family, and we like dam raised kids better than bottle-raised kids. Bottle-raised kids come to humans for food, so tend to be very mouthy, whereas dam-raised kids come to humans for scratches (if they've been socialized, which is no hardship! Just pet them a lot), which means that they're (in my opinion) less obnoxious. 
(For a more complete discussion of this topic, click HERE.)

In any case, I'm going to cover dam raising here, and try to give a general overview of bottle raising, with some helpful links. 

In dam raising, the kids just...nurse. That's how they get their food. :) There are a few problems or questions that might come up with this: 
1. How to get the kids to start nursing--they often seem so clueless!
2. What happens when a doe has multiples--and only has two teats! 
3. How tell if kids are getting enough to eat?

Here are some answers! 

1. When the kids are born, and stand up for the first time, they'll start "bopping around" looking for a dark space where they can stick their heads up and start suckling. If you place the kid underneath the dam, some kids will find the teat right away and start sucking.
Others seem totally clueless, and will try to suck on the doe's front end, beard, hair, etc. It's generally best to put these kids right up close to the teat, so it's maybe touching their mouth. They will fight you if you try to force their mouth onto the teat, so it's kind of a matter of "blocking them in" until they figure it out! Some people will cover the kid's eyes, which makes them turn their heads up, which in theory gets their mouths closer to the teats.
I know this is probably not the most helpful explanation, but it is more of an art than a science, and it'll get easier as you practice! And the good news is, not every kid needs help finding the teat, and once they've found it once, they generally can find it again for themselves. :)

2. There are two issues with multiples: whether they can all take turns nursing, and if the doe can produce enough milk for them. HERE's a good article on how many kids a doe can feed. Some does in their prime can make enough for quads, but that's very rare...most does peak at enough for triplets. Or at least, that's what I've heard, and what we've experienced. We've had does successfully raise triplets, but when a first freshener had quads, we had to supplement two of the kids with the bottle. 
The other issue is that if a doe has more than two kids, and one of them is much smaller than the others, in most cases, that kid will not get enough food, because the others will be constantly pushing him/her off the teats. In this case, it's generally a good idea to supplement the smallest kid, if not bottle raise him/her altogether.
In both these cases, it's very important to be able to tell if the kid is getting enough to eat! Which brings us to #3...

3. There are essentially two ways to tell if the kid(s) are getting enough to eat: behavior, and weight gain.
A kid who isn't getting enough to eat will be hunched up, lethargic, and may have his/her ears down. They'll look very sad. This is a good indicator that they need supplementation.
The other way is to weight them. Nigerian kids should gain around 2-4 oz. per day in the first week. (An excellent discussion of this can be found HERE). I don't know of anyone who's done research on how much they should be gaining after that, but they should be gaining...and each kid should be gaining about equally. If all the kids in a litter haven't approximately reached the same weight after a few weeks, it's time to supplement.

At this point, you may be thinking "what on earth does she mean by 'supplement'?" Many people, when faced with a kid who isn't getting enough to eat, will just bottle-feed the kid. Thus far, my mom hasn't wanted the stress of having a kid in the house for bottle feeding, so we've simply left the kids with the dam, and offered them a bottle a few times a day. Generally, they figure out pretty quickly that the bottle means more food, and they're happy to take the bottle as well as nurse from mom occasionally. I have heard that some kids, when left with their moms, will not take a bottle, but we so far haven't had that issue. If we do, we'll have to bottle-feed the kid, I imagine. 

We use a Pritchard nipple (find them HERE) for bottle supplementation, although we've tried other teats at other times as well.

On to bottle feeding! 

Bottle feeding means taking the kids away from the dam at birth, bringing them to a safe place, and being solely responsible for their feeding until they're eight weeks old. I have never personally done this, so HERE's one link to a Nigerian bottle feeding schedule, along with a few bottle feeding considerations. 

I'm sure issues do come up with bottle feeding, but since we haven't experienced any of those, I can only directly you HERE and HERE to learn more. :)

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