# FF Bagging up Early



## Goatgirl47 (Jan 25, 2016)

One of our goats, Penelope, is due April 6th (and this will be her first time), but she is already bagging up. I thought that first freshener's start getting their udder approximately six weeks before kidding? 

Thanks!


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## Pearce Pastures (Jan 25, 2016)

When you say bagging up, do you mean TIGHT, like no longer soft because it is full?  That would not be normal and I would wonder about my due date.  But as far as an udder developing, I have had both those that barely have an udder until they kid and some that start months beforehand, getting quite a large  build but still soft.


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## frustratedearthmother (Jan 25, 2016)

Agree with PP.   

Just remember - FF'ers don't follow the rules.....


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## Goatgirl47 (Jan 25, 2016)

No, it's not tight, just there is a little fat-like bulge.  Not a good description, I know.

It's like you said, @Pearce Pastures, a little build, but not very large, and it's soft, too.


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## Mini Horses (Jan 25, 2016)

You mean, there ARE rules??   Where's that darn book?!


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## goats&moregoats (Jan 26, 2016)

They are so right...My first FF this year started developing a bag in late Nov. early Dec., if my memory serves me right. Her due date is Feb 12th...I have no earthly idea how she is going to make it that far. She looks like she is going to explode...bag, belly and lady parts. Another FF is also due the 12 of Feb. she has no signs of an utter, but has started to loose her mucus plug.

When they say each one is different they aren't kidding!  Pun intended.

They add their own little twist to the "doe code" and it's even more madding! . I have more FF following along over the next several months..this will be interesting this year


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## Mini Horses (Jan 26, 2016)

You have to think about this -- a FF had NO bag, only little teats.  So she has to start earlier to get enough of a bag to hold the milk needed.   Some start sooner.  

A goat does stay within a pretty strict time for gestation, so that's why we all want to know date bred.   Where a horse, for instance, can take 9.5-12 months.  Depends on their size -- my minis generally ranged from 9.5-10 mos for the smaller ones and up to 10.5 mos for the larger/taller.   Talk about a  difference.  I specialized in the smaller ones and had hard time making others who did not, realize the time difference was accurate......until they had a small one!

I can say that the mares would repeat the gestation with 3-4 days every time.   Most often your does will, also.   If you keep a good calendar you can know what to expect.    Keep a chart with each doe and list their times.   You'll find it works well.


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## Alibo (Feb 18, 2017)

Goatgirl47 said:


> One of our goats, Penelope, is due April 6th (and this will be her first time), but she is already bagging up. I thought that first freshener's start getting their udder approximately six weeks before kidding?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks!



I am going through this exact same thing! Almost to the very date. Following your thread closely, would love to see some pictures. What kind of goat, how old, how big? Lol love BYH because I can find an answer to every question


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 20, 2017)

Hi @Alibo! I actually posted this thread last year.  We have since sold Penelope, but I still have a few pictures of her from around that time. 

Penelope was, at that time, around 19-months-old. She was a Fainting goat, pretty small and short but very stout and heavy, I think we weight taped her at about 80 pounds. She ended up kidding on April 2nd with twins, a beautiful buckling and doeling. She did great, was a wonderful mama except that she weaned her kids when they were less than eight weeks old. 

This picture was from mid February (of last year) I think....



 
March 16


 
I don't know when I took this


 
March 26, what a tank. 






 


Here is a link to a kidding thread I had for her and two other of our goats last year: https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/p-k-ms-kidding-thread.32821/


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

Sorry I should have looked at the date but thank you for sharing those pictures! She is gorgeous and that helps a lot. Glad to know she kidded healthy kids and my girl should hopefully too! My little doe is due beginning of April and her udder is two handfuls. She is a nubian/lamancha and only 86 lbs  at 11 mo old. She hopped the fence herself to get to our buck and was not going to be bred until next season. I was very worried because she is stunted from cocci (bought her and her sister from horrid conditions as bottle babies) but she is healthy and our buck is much smaller than her so I think we are going to be ok. Vet is coming out soon to look her over


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

All those kids are just gorgeous!


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 20, 2017)

86 pounds at 11 months old seems the perfect size to breed a Lamancha or a Nubian (and your girl is both!) from what I've heard. She should be fine.  Looking forward to seeing some goat kid pictures in April!  

We won't have any goat kids this year which makes me so sad! We sold all of our does that kidded last year (we sold Magnolia and Penelope because we were getting into dairy goats, and we sold Clover and Kendall - our Alpine and Mini-Lamancha does - because we kept a doeling from each of them. In our current herd we have 6 doelings, between 8- and 16-months old, and one 5-month old buckling.


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 20, 2017)

And thank you! We really loved the colors too, although we only kept one doeling from those three kidding (Midge).


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

Ooh  good to hear. I have been told they should be at least 110 and started to freak ￼sounds like lots of new babies for you next year, and it's always fun to see what combinations of colours you get from new genetics ￼thanks for your input it has really made my day!


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 20, 2017)

Next year kidding season will be crazy. Six first-fresheners (maybe seven, I'd like to get a meat goat cross doeling this year, that's just a MAYBE though), and also I'd like to get another meat goat buck, preferably a Kiko because I've read that they are very hardy and parasite resistant - some of the doelings I have now are anything but hardy - and so I aim to switch our herd to mostly meat/dairy crosses. The thing I want most in my goats is hardiness. And of course I love color, too. 

I am really wishing we would have kept Penelope's doeling, Gloria. She was SO pretty and sweet. But Penelope was my younger brother's goat, and he had decided that he wanted to keep Penelope instead of her doeling, then he changed his mind, but it was already too late because someone was very interested in Penelope's kids, and ended up buying them.
I would have kept Magnolia's gorgeous twin doelings, but they both had extra teats, and I don't want that in my herd either. Yes, I'm very picky about my goats, though I LOVE them! 

How many goats do you have, and what breeds?


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 20, 2017)

Sorry for the long post, I love talking about goats and could go on and on....


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

Haha I could go on forever too! Love love them! We have a mixed herd too. Only two years into goats but we started with some milk/meat crosses. We were told they were Spanish but they lookEd like nubian boer crosses. Great parasite resistance too. They are stocky but still produce 4 cups of milk a day so seemed like a win win. We bought a Pygmy Buck because they are supposed to be great meat and good at converting food to fat so they do not eat as much and still stay healthy. 

The first year we had all bucklings born and were pretty disapointed. Read that maybe our buck was not getting enough minerals so switched from a block to loose.
  We added our two numanchas last year because we wanted more milk. The poor things were living in a filthy dry lot and I had never seen such poor goats. Never saw them scour but I suspected coccidia because they were so slow to grow, treated accordingly but they still look small.
 And then bought a huge lamancha because I love their personality. She is 175 lbs and our poor buck had to be put on blocks just to reach her. Still not confident she is bred but hopefully the vet can tell me soon.

So far one buckling this year, hoping not to have a repeat of last year! I am scared it is genetic and my buck is only throwing males 

What are the breeds of yours? All alpine and mini Mancha? I love colour too, do you have some coulourful does? Posting pictures in a minute


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

Our full sized lamancha likes to stick her head through fences lol



 

 1st kid of the season

 one of our "spanish" due this weekend￼


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## Alibo (Feb 20, 2017)

The guy with the bouffant is our buckling we kept from last year. Current herd sire now. Small herd of only seven butimes they are my own private paradise


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 21, 2017)

Awwww, what pretty goats!  I love the buck's hair-do.

Wow - your Lamancha doe is 175 pounds?! I thought my Alpine doe that I just recently sold was big, but she was *only* about 110 pounds.

I wouldn't say that our goats are individually colorful, but together as a herd I think they are. 
Right now I only have time to download pictures of our two Nubian does, Harriet and Melody. We got Harriet (brown goat) back in July when she was 8-months old. She was severely underweight, weighting only 40 instead of 70-80 pounds. 
Melody is our bottle baby we got in early July as a 3 week old. She is sooooo sweet. 

I've got to go now! I'll upload pictures of the rest of our goats later.


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## Alibo (Feb 21, 2017)

Oh they are soo cute! Just love those ears! Thank you for sharing


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

Thank you and your welcome!

Annie is a French Alpine, and she just turned 1 year old. She is probably my least hardiest goat. She will just not gain any (ok, maybe she has gained a little in the last few months) weight! We sold her sister (and her mother), and she was actually the better of the two. I look forward to hopefully breeding her to a Kiko buck to get some big hardy babies! 



 


 


 
Sage is my younger sister's goat. She is a 9-month-old Saanen. She is in great condition, although she has had a gross snotty nose since we got her (about a month ago).  As you can see, she was one of the goats we had to feed while we were taking her pictures, she doesn't know how to stay still.


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

Captain Blamey is our buckling. He is a full-sized Lamancha, and is about 5-months-old.


 


 


 
Midge is our only Mini goat. She's a Mini-Lamancha, and will be 1-year-old in April. Her and Annie were born and raised on our farm. She will probably be my hardiest goat. Her mom, Kendall, didn't need any grain, but then one day soon after she kidded she got a tiny - actually it was big, Kendall never took tiny bites - bite of Clover's (Annie's mom's) grain and from that day on she despised her own alfalfa pellet/kelp/black oil sunflower seed mix. I refused to give her grain though, wanting her to eat her own great food. But, alas, she got super thin in just about a week (she somehow had the power to get thin in just days when she thought she wasn't getting enough food) so I caved in and gave her the grain! And, what do you know, she got fatter very quickly after that, LOL. She was the hard-to-please kind of goat. 
Look at Midge's little beard!


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## Alibo (Feb 22, 2017)

they are precious! I love the little bells on the collar. Will you be able to breed midge to your new buck with the size difference or are you planning on a smaller buck for her?


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

And last but not least, there is Verity, our full-sized Lamancha! She's just about two weeks younger then Midge. She is like a big puppy, always wanting to be rubbed and petted everywhere! She's our only goat with wattles. She's also the second plumpest goat (Midge is the fattest, hehe).


 


 


 


I am curious, what do you feed each of your goats? And how many times per day if you do? I am trying to get a better feeding schedule going. Since we sold Clover, Kendall, Lulu (Clover's other doeling), Eddie (Kendall's wether), and Sebastian (a Nigerian Dwarf buckling), we've just been feeding our goats a scoop full of alfalfa hay in the mornings. But we just went to TSC yesterday and got calf pellets (I've heard people feed their goats that on this forum to help them grow and gain more weight) and alfalfa pellets to feed each goat individually.


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

Alibo said:


> they are precious! I love the little bells on the collar. Will you be able to breed midge to your new buck with the size difference or are you planning on a smaller buck for her?



We put those bells on their collars so that when we let them free-range in the evenings we can more easily locate them. 

I don't know what I am going to breed Midge to. Maybe a Nigerian Dwarf? I would like to breed her to Cap, but I think I am just going to wait and see how big she gets. She's about 75 percent Lamancha, and 25 percent Nigerian Dwarf.


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## Alibo (Feb 22, 2017)

I only feed grain to my pregnant and milking does. So once a day to the pregnant does and then twice for my milkers only if I am milking them twice a day. It is a 16% protien feed with not enough fat for my liking. It contains BOSS and alfalfa along with other grains. I get it straight from the mill that makes it and it has very little corn so I am sticking with it for now and looking into adding a fat supplement to fatten up my thinner girls.
Other than that they have free choice hay and two pastures that we rotate.
Our boys and donkey get only the grass and hay and do fine on that. They lose a small amount of weight during the heaviest rut, but since I run them with my does all year it is over very quickly and they put the weight back on.

And loose minerals and backing soda always available. I also offer them diatomaceous earth from time to time, sometimes they pass by it other times they can't get enough.

I will let you know if I finally find a goodress fat supplement that works


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## Goat Whisperer (Feb 22, 2017)

I don't know that I'd breed that doe to a Kiko- a meat goat. She is already small, and Kikos can throw some big kids.


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

I probably won't unless she fattens up. I just saw a HUGE Kiko buck on Craigslist, and now I know how big they can get.


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

I had a loose goat mineral out for the goats but when our calves moved in with our goats they kept eating it.  So then we put together a little 'mineral room' in a vacant dog kennel. We made sure that the calves couldn't get in, and then we put more minerals and kelp in some containers for them to eat, but they keep putting their front legs up in them and getting the minerals/kelp dirty.  They've gotten better at it though.

@Alibo, have you ever gotten the goat protein pail from TSC? My goats love it, and, unbelievably, don't jump up in it.


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## Alibo (Feb 22, 2017)

I have seen it but I decided not to do any mineral source that does not contain sugar. They seem to eat more of it because it is sweet, as well as my dogs, ducks, and glutton donkey. Also the grain and alfalfa my does get is 16% and 4% fat so it seemed a little redundant. I may be wrong though as I am still learning as I go￼
￼that last doe is beautiful I think she is my favorite! Such a pretty pattern


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## Goatgirl47 (Feb 22, 2017)

We don't feed our goats any kind of sweet feed so that's one reason I get the protein pail even though it has a good bit of molasses in it. Some of our goats are just so picky, that's one reason I tried it. They all loved it including the before mentioned picky Kendall. 

Verity, the last doe, I think might be my favorite too.  For a while it has been Melody, since we raised her on a bottle and she has always been so attached to us. She's very sweet and mellow.


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