# New Nubian Doeling



## Goatgirl47 (Jul 20, 2016)

Yesterday we brought home a 9-month-old Nubian doeling. She tested negative for Johnes, CAE, CL, and is G6S normal.
The previous owner wasn't able to be home at the time of pickup (because of work). She (doeling) was in a small fenced area with two rams. In an adjoining pasture were two horses and a Nigerian Dwarf goat. The previous owner said that she missed her dam and sibling (they were recently sold) so he had put her in with the horses and the other goat, but they didn't get along very well so he had put the doeling with his two rams instead.

When we arrived to pick her up her voice was hoarse from crying so she sounded like (and still does), a donkey.  We also noticed that the area around her left eye was swollen, but not until we got home did we notice that it was also cloudy, and I don't think she can see out of that eye! Bossy Clover was chasing her around yesterday and whenever she came at her from the left side, the doeling never flinched or moved until it was too late and Clover had already made contact with her.

Anyway, besides being blind in one eye, she is too thin. What do you think? Should I get her on some grain? Right now she is hanging out with the other goats, but mainly with our other Nubian, Melody (because Melody doesn't butt her like the others do).

Pictures:


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## babsbag (Jul 20, 2016)

I wouldn't give her too much grain too fast. I would really try to feed what the breeder was feeding and then add a little grain as a top dress. She doesn't look THAT skinny. I would watch her for a parasite bloom that can often come with the stress of moving. 

As far as the eye, I have never seen pink eye up close and personal but I would sure check her out for that. I know it can cause a cloudy eye.  Poor baby was probably terrified without herd mates and then living with the rams.


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## TAH (Jul 20, 2016)

Congrats!! 
She cute. She doesn't look that thin to me. I would have her checked out for her eye. Sometimes it is common for goats to be blind for a while. She looks small to me for 9 month old.


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## OneFineAcre (Jul 20, 2016)

I'm going to disagree with Babs and TAH
She looks pretty thin to me
Edited to add:
But most of the Nubians I see are in the show ring and like my goats are pampered


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## babsbag (Jul 20, 2016)

@OneFineAcre  I have pampered goats too.

She looks thin in one picture but not too bad in the others so I figured better to err on the side of going slow with a new food, especially grain. If she has been stressed with her living arrangements she may not have been eating at all. Mine can get pretty thin looking between breakfast and lunch.   She might fill out rather quickly once she feels safe enough to enjoy eating. 

I would be more concerned with getting the eye looked at. Pink eye is contagious.


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## Goat Whisperer (Jul 20, 2016)

She looks pretty thin. Poor girl. She looks really small for 9 months. How tall is she? Weight? 

I'd be slowly getting her on grain, possibly calf manna. Run her fecal. 

You really need to consider quarantining new goats you bring in. Just tossing every new goat you bring home is not wise. 
Every time you bring a goat home, it will have a parasite bloom. All those parasites will be in your pasture. 
If you have a doe that develops respiratory issues, that could be passed to your herd. 
If a goat has lice/mites that will spread
Sore mouth, pinkeye, the list goes on. 
It puts the whole herd at risk. 


When you just toss a goat with a new herd it causes more stress.


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## Southern by choice (Jul 20, 2016)

She does look really thin.
At 9 months she should be 100 lbs if not more. If on the smaller side 85-90.

She is beautiful! 

I would be checking fecal ASAP for parasites and cocci.
I agree with @Goat Whisperer  quarantining any new animal is a must.


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## MrsKuhn (Jul 20, 2016)

I agree with the post above, she looks thin. But as @babsbag said I would keep her on what the breeder had her on and slowly up her grain to put some weight on her. But too much too soon could cause more issues than help. 

I would get her checked out about that eye, just to be safe and know what you are working with. 

And I also agree with @Southern by choice & @Goat Whisperer // while it is more work and a little more of a pain I would quarantine new goats.


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## babsbag (Jul 21, 2016)

She ought to love all that green grass.


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## Goatgirl47 (Jul 25, 2016)

Sorry for responding so late - we had guests for a few days and have been busy catching up on everything.

Yesterday I weight taped Harriet at 50 pounds.... Today I weighed her with a scale and it says she is 40 pounds.So if the scale is right, that means she's only 13 pounds heavier then my three month-old Mini-Lamancha kid! When this rain lets up I will weigh her again to make certain.

She (Harriet) is 24 inches tall, if that helps. This week we are (Lord willing!) going to bring her to the vet clinic for a checkup. Other than being super small and thin, she is doing great.

In her previous home she was in a significantly small pasture with very short grass and no hay or leaves or any brush at all. I will have to contact the previous owner again (he moved to Texas three weeks ago, so his Dad had been taking care of the animals for a short period) and ask him if he is sure that she is nine-months-old, and what he had her on.






















And @Goat Whisperer, next time we get a new goat I will definitely quarantine!


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## babsbag (Jul 25, 2016)

She looks thinner is these pictures. I would start adding in a concentrated feed slowly. Calf manna is a good one, but be sure and go slow. You could also do some beet pulp; goats usually love it. I would make sure no worms too.


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## Southern by choice (Jul 25, 2016)

She needs a fecal check yesterday
Look for cocci and parasites

Are you POSITIVE she is CAE negative?


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## babsbag (Jul 25, 2016)

If she is 9 months then she was born in Nov. Not common for a Nubian to freshen that time of year. Not impossible, but not common either.


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## Latestarter (Jul 27, 2016)

I don't own any goats yet, and some might say that I like my animals "overweight" ( I prefer "not skinny")... To me, she looks very underweight and in need of some serious feeding up. Have to agree with what's already been said by the pros... a fecal yesterday and boost in high quality/high protein feed.


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## Dage (Jul 27, 2016)

She´s absolutely gorgeous! With all that green grass and a huge amount of love I believe she will be just fine! A tad of grain won´t hurt her and that with you nearby will help you and her bond. Love the pictures! 
OH! BTW! We used to raise and had over 200 rabbits. At times the bucks would find themselves head to head and would go straight for each others eyes. We used aloe vera on them and though they had by all appearances looked to be blind with the use of the aloe vera (straight from the leaf) we found that their eyes HEALED! Aloe vera really is a very healing and miracle of a plant!


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## TAH (Jul 27, 2016)

She does look thinner in these last batch or pics. She is very pretty. I agree with @babsbag that November is a very odd time for a goat to freshen.


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## Goatgirl47 (Jul 28, 2016)

@Southern by choice, we had her tested for CAE before we got her. The vet clinic that handled the testing called us to tell us the results (and emailed them to us). 

I ran a fecal yesterday and it looks like Harriet has Brown Stomach worms. What then should I use to worm her?

@Dage, we have an aloe vera plant right now and we use it for cuts/burns (on us). I will try that on Harriet though!


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## babsbag (Jul 28, 2016)

I would use Ivermectin to treat the worms. Injectable given orally, 2 cc / 100 lbs.


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## Goatgirl47 (Jul 28, 2016)

Yesterday we also ran a fecal on our Alpine doeling and she has what looks like Barberpole worms. Can I treat her with Ivermectin as well?


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## babsbag (Jul 28, 2016)

Yes.


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## Southern by choice (Jul 28, 2016)

What were their counts? 
And are you skilled enough for cocci? I would be checking for that as well.
They are very very small.


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## Goatgirl47 (Jul 28, 2016)

Me and my brother looked and looked to see if there were any other eggs, but we found none except for what looked like the brown stomach worms. I'm pretty sure she doesn't have coccidiosis.

There were too many to count, although not a whole lot compared to the amount of eggs we found in our Alpine doe a few months back. I think I will run another fecal soon to make sure though.


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## babsbag (Jul 28, 2016)

You should run another one after you worm her to make sure it worked. 

One good thing about living in a HOT DRY climate and on a hill with no standing water is that worms don't like it here. Tape worm is about all I deal with.

ETA...and Cocci


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 4, 2016)

My Mom has always thought that Harriet was weaned too early therefore stunting her growth. So I just asked the previous owner and he said she was weaned at approximately two months old.  He also said that she was born on November 29th.


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## TAH (Aug 4, 2016)

she is such a cutie

She doesn't look 8 months old to me.

Has she gained any weight?


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 4, 2016)

In person I think she _looks_ 8 months old. She is just severely stunted. I guess from being weaned too early?
I don't know if she has gained any weight, because we haven't weighed her for the second time yet.

Here are a couple more pictures from the other day:


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## TAH (Aug 4, 2016)

Maybe it is seeing her next to the young goatsI don't know.


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## Southern by choice (Aug 4, 2016)

I  your herd! Made me smile just seeing the pics! 

Now that you have dewormed her you may want to hit her with a second dewormer of a different class.

It takes some time for them to rebound but you can get her there!
Cocci is very small on a slide an untrained eye will miss it.

You may want to consider some Chaffhaye... I mentioned it in another thread. You will have to find a dealer but it is good stuff.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 4, 2016)

Thank you!

We've been giving all the (goat) kids an herbal dewormer and we'll have to see if it works. It's the only other wormer we have besides DuMOR pellets.

We actually have a lot of good quality Chaffhaye in our barn right now. A while ago we had ordered a lot of it because (back then) our milk cows loved it during milking. But we got a few new cows and now of course none of them care for it, they prefer the Alfalfa pellets.  Our goats - and the calves living with the goats - love it though. I'll have to introduce some of it to Harriet soon!


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## Green Acres Farm (Aug 4, 2016)

Be careful with herbal dewormers. Make sure you are getting fecals done to make sure their worm load stays low. I posted a thread about that titled: Do herbal wormers actually work?
Also, pelleted dewormer is often known to be ineffective. Plus, it is hard to feed exactly right individual amounts- resulting often in underdosing and worm resistance.


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## babsbag (Aug 4, 2016)

Weaning at 8 weeks isn't really too young. I know many people keep their kids on milk to 12 weeks but I wean all of mine at 8 if they are being sold. A cocci load could have stunted her as well as poor feed and/or selenium deficiency.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 5, 2016)

Green Acres Farm said:


> Be careful with herbal dewormers. Make sure you are getting fecals done to make sure their worm load stays low. I posted a thread about that titled: Do herbal wormers actually work?
> Also, pelleted dewormer is often known to be ineffective. Plus, it is hard to feed exactly right individual amounts- resulting often in underdosing and worm resistance.




@Green Acres Farm, three of the five kids we are giving it to were previously dewormed with a different and more effective wormer. I am planning on running fecals on those three kids soon. The other two (a Mini-Lamancha wether and his twin, pictured above with Harriet) didn't look like they needed worming but I am giving them the herbal wormer just in case. We are using Molly's Herbals. 

I was told a few months ago on this forum that pelleted dewormers don't work very well, and since then I haven't used the rest of the bag I had left.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 5, 2016)

babsbag said:


> Weaning at 8 weeks isn't really too young. I know many people keep their kids on milk to 12 weeks but I wean all of mine at 8 if they are being sold.



I thought for standard goats the earliest you should wean them is 12 weeks. We go longer. I think it is better for them to be on their dams/or the bottle for a longer period of time. With calves most people would wean at 3-6 months, but we go 10-15 months.


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## TAH (Aug 5, 2016)

Goatgirl47 said:


> I thought for standard goats the earliest you should wean them is 12 weeks. We go longer. I think it is better for them to be on their dams/or the bottle for a longer period of time. With calves most people would wean at 3-6 months, but we go 10-15 months.


Do you have a reason for going longer?

That is a really long time to be feeding a calf.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 6, 2016)

Warning, this is a fairly long post! 

@TAH, we don't bottle-feed our calves, they are all dam raised. Once they are two months old we separate them from their dams and put them in with the chickens/goats. They get to nurse twice a day until they reach about four months old, and then they can only nurse once a day.
The cows we try to breed back 2-3 months after calving. If we let them have their calves 24/7 they don't come back into heat.

We don't want to milk every day so that is one reason for letting the calves nurse longer. We usually milk 3-5 times per week, and the calf gets to nurse on the cow _after_ we milk her, _and_ on the weekends when we don't milk her.
We also just think it is better and healthier for the calf to nurse longer. They usually fill out better too.

Every single calf I have seen weaned at 3-5 months old is very small, stunted, and looks like a runt. And bottle calves too. We once bought a Black Angus bottle calf and we weaned him at 4-6 months (I think). He was VERY stunted. We hardly got any meat off of him. He was way smaller and leaner then some other beef calves who were a lot younger him and nursing on their dams.


This is Violet, a calf we weaned at 8 months old. That isn't really too early for us, but we still like to have them nursing a little while longer. Violet's dam was bred back very quickly at her previous home, so we had to wean Violet earlier then expected so that Rowena could have a rest before her calf was born.
Below is Violet at about 20 months old, around two months into her gestation with her first calf.







This is a heifer we bought who had already been weaned - at four months old. We bought her when she was five months old, along with her mother. We slowly grafted her back on her dam and let her nurse until she was around thirteen months old.
The day she arrived:



She was potbellied.



And at twelve months old (still nursing once per day):



And here is Piper, who was with her dam every day (only being separated at night) until she was about five months old. In this picture she was seven months old. She was our chubbiest calf.



And at fifteen months old, just before we sold her. She was still nursing because she was a milk thief. She only got to nurse once a day though (when one of the other calves nursed on his mama). She was a pig!!



And here is our current milk thief, Linus. He's fifteen months old and only gets to nurse on the weekends right now. The only reason we still let him nurse is because one of our littler calves can't drink all the milk her mama produces just yet.




That is just what we do.  Not everybody agrees with letting calves nurse for 12 months!


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## Southern by choice (Aug 6, 2016)

Wow... know nothin' about cattle but to my completely untrained eye... gorgeous. They look healthy and shiny.


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## TAH (Aug 6, 2016)

WOW @Goatgirl47 those are some of the nicest looking cows I have ever seen especially the last pic of the jersey. He is filled out really nice.


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## NH homesteader (Aug 6, 2016)

Your cows are beautiful.  Makes me wish I had enough property for cows now...


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 18, 2016)

These were taken Saturday. It rained heavily all weekend. Linus (15-month-old calf) went into the goat house and kicked most of the goats out, so they got all wet. We had to fix up a place in the barn for them instead. They were glad to get out of the rain!


 


 


 


 


 
Sally wouldn't let anybody eat out of the hay bag.


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## Goatgirl47 (Aug 22, 2016)




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