How do you raise your babies?

[newbiekat]

I am still fairly new at raising my goats. I have had two years of kids, which have been great, but I am wondering how y'all raise yours?

Normally our routine has been:
- Kids are born, kids get 3 days with momma alone, then are turned out to the herd (disbudded when appropriate)
- At 2 weeks old they get tattooed
- At 8 weeks they get their first CDT (Momma has hers 4 weeks before kidding)

That's about all we do with our goats. We don't worm unless they need it.

I've heard about Coccidia prevention, can anyone explain how that works, what do you do?

I would love to pull my babies and bottle feed them, but we work during the day. If you do this, how do you pull them if you missed the birth and babies are already on momma?

Is there anything else that anyone does that I could possibly implement into our regular kidding routine?

 

[LeviS]

With my meat goats I just let the mama take care of it, but I'm going to be going into dairy (looking at one...probably getting her, this weekend) and have been trying to decide which I want to do also. Pull babies or leave them with mama. I'm personally leaning towards bottle feeding the kids but I just don't know haha.

 

[MsDeb]

If you bottle feed dairy babies do you have to do that every feeding or can you alternate milking mama and letting them nurse?

 

[newbiekat]

LeviS- I usually leave them to care for their own, but I'm trying to figure out how to bottle feed, cuz I would like to do that.

Ms Deb- I think you would need to keep them on one or the other but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyone else have any ideas? I would like to start coccidia prevention next year, but not sure where to start. Also what about if we aren't there when she kids and mom and baby already nurses before I get home? How do i go about pulling baby? Can I just start right when I get home?

 

[SA Farm]

Bottle feeding is an awful lot of work to do just for the experience of it... I leave kids with their mom for the first week, then start separating them at night and milking the doe first thing in the morning - then give the kids back.
If you want super friendly kids, you can always give them a few supplementary feedings yourself to help associate you with food, but I haven't found that necessary to have friendly kids as long as I spend lots of quality time with them daily

If you have a doe unable to care for her kids completely (too many kids- not enough milk, etc), you will need to bottle feed on a supplementary basis, leaving the kids with the doe to allow them to learn to eat, drink, and be goatie from her. Mother really does know best in my experience/opinion.

Pulling a kid from its mother after it has suckled from her and bottle feeding it is definitely possible. Just take the kid away and bottle feed it. It'll take a bit of doing to get the kid to take the 'new' nipple, but it's definitely possible. Just make sure it gets plenty of colostrum and have fun feeding it every hour or two for those first weeks!

 

[newbiekat]

What about a lambar feeder? Will kids a day or two old get the hang of a lambar feeder? I know that bottle feeding is a task in itself but I truly enjoy it.

 

[OneFineAcre]

We do our's very similar to newbiekat.
We do coccidia prevention because we have struggled with it the last couple of years due to the wet weather. In all honesty, partly our fault too for being to crowded.

We'v had mixed results gettting one to take a bottle later.

No way we would ever have time to bottle feed.

 

[newbiekat]

OFA- How do you do your coccidia prevention? I've heard mixed reviews about the CoRid in the water vs DiMethox 40% and 12.5%... I would like to do it this year but not quite sure where to go with it. Which do you use and how do you do prevention?

 

[OneFineAcre]

We were doing the DiMethox 12.5%. We would dose for 5 days when they were about 10 days old. We would treat again every few weeks.

But then last year we had a kid die and two this year when they were all about 10 weeks old while we were treating them.
And when they died they were displaying no symptoms, diarrea or anything. They were fine that morning and dead that afternoon.

Talked to two vets this year when it happened, and both thought that it was likely clostridium that caused the deaths, but we had both necropsied at state lab and they were negative for clostridium. Cause of death was confirmed as coccidia.

So, we started using Toltrazuril. We had to order it from outside the US because it is not approved by the USDA. It is made for horses.

You give one dose and it kills all life stages of coccidia. So, now we give the kids a dose every 2 weeks.

The problem we had was a direct result of incredibly wet weather, which we have no control over and crowded conditions which we do have control over.

We have had an occassion to speak to some other breeders who have been breeding for 30 plus years, and they also said that at some point they have had problems with coccidia. Had years where they lost all of their kids. We had have been doing this for about 5 years now and they said we had probably built up a load of coccidia on the property. But, then after you have a bad year or two, the animals become more reisistant.

 

[goatgurl]

first, i have lamancha dairy goats and i treat them totally different from the meat goats I've had so right now I'm just talking milkers. i use to raise everything on bottles then as the herd grew i switched to lambars but for the last couple of years i have gone to letting the kids nurse and at about 2 wks of age i separate them at night and milk mom of a morning. now that i live alone i don't need as much milk and this works for me. that way if something comes up and i can't be there i just leave the kids with mom and don't have to worry about them. and yes you can get them to take a bottle after they have nursed, the younger the easier but if they are hungry and the milk is warm they will learn quickly. i have taught month old babies to take a bottle. since a lambar nipple is much harder than a regular lamb nipple i usually start them out with the softer one and when i am ready to switch them to the lambar i will put the lambar nipple on the bottle for a day or two to get them use to the feel of it and to keep the bottle tilted so they would get use to sucking longer to get their milk since they have to suck thru a straw to get the milk out of a lambar. just remember you have to be as stump headed as they are sometimes. @OneFineAcre you can get toltrazuril (baytril) at horseprerace.com