Over a week ago, the last of our daughter's does (she owns most of the goats on our farm) gave birth. Yay! This doe had us guessing for many months as to whether or not she was actually pregnant. Mixed physical signs as well as the fact that she's a very large bodied doe bred to a tiny miniature buck didn't help. But at last we found she was indeed pregnant (the two little hooves protruding from her backside was a good indication, just kidding, we actually were pretty convinced she was pregnant a little before that). She had an easy delivery (thank you Lord) giving birth to three healthy, bouncing (literally) baby bucklings (boys).

A minor complication developed the next morning after her delivery. During our morning barn chores we noticed the bellies on the little newborns were empty. Not good. They had nursed soon after their middle of the night delivery (we make sure of that), but it appeared they had not nursed since. Again, not good since newborns really need the immune building colostrum their moms produce and they need it within the first 12 hours of birth.

We observed the doe, making sure she showed all the signs of having properly bonded to her kids. Sometimes when does don't bond properly to their offspring they won't allow them to nurse. In fact, they usually won't have anything to do with them. This wasn't the case with this doe. She was "talking" to her newborns, nuzzling them, and becoming concerned if she became separated from them, all signs she was bonded. Next step was to examine her udder. Yep, there was a problem. Though not visible to our eyes, my daughter could definitely feel the congestion in her udder and this congestion was making it difficult for her kids to get milk and difficult for her to allow them to nurse. It hurt for her to nurse her babies.

To solve the problem my daughter began by gently massaging the doe's udder followed by hand milking her. This was done a couple times a day the first few days to help clear her congested udder and the doe tolerated the hand milking better then she tolerated nursing her kids. We left the babies with their mom so she'd remain bonded to them, and using a bottle, we supplemented the kids with the milk we got from milking their mom. Gradually the doe's udder healed and within a weeks time she was allowing her babies to nurse. Yay again! As cute as they are, we really didn't want to end up with bottle babies this late in the season.


During the week we were helping with their feedings I got these cute pic of the three boys.

All three are different colored, and two have blue eyes like their sire.

Mom is 1/2 Lamancha and 1/2 Nubian while Dad is a Nigerian Dwarf and you can really see the three breeds represented by the different ears. The middle one has the short eared Lamancha gene. The other two express a mix of the long Nubian ears and the prick, upright ears of the Nigerian breed.

Even though we are no longer handling these kids for daily feedings they remain friendly, especially the little brown or tan buckling ( I never remember the correct color names for goats), on the far left. He really enjoys his daily pettings.