03/22/2025
Having animals definitely isn’t always rainbows and sunshine and my first year of goat ownership and breeding has definitely proved that. I’ve been waiting to make this post for a few days to make sure everyone pulled through.
Lily has been my trial this spring. Lily is a little older doe but I purchased her bred and last year she had quads unassisted. Great, right?? 4 babies. No help! That’s what I’m talking about!!! Wrong! GOD has taught me a lot about greed.
About a month ago Lily started developing anemia due to worm load I assume. I dewormed her. Gave her b vitamins and all the things. Her energy kept decreasing. We presumed she was carrying four again as she was LARGE!! Her famacha still wasn’t great and I kept up the supportive care and dual dewormed her twice. Then a couple of weeks later she went into ketosis. It’s where she is using more energy to grow the babies than she can eat so she is burning fat for energy and she didn’t have much to lose. I worked around the clock making smoothies, drenching molasses, Karo syrup, nutri drench, all the treats she wanted. Anything to try and help her want to eat and make it through. Nothing was working and she was laying A LOT!
I was worried about pneumonia because of that so I was keeping a close eye on her temperature. Sure enough, Saturday morning she developed a fever and her lungs sounded horrible. Me, as a fairly new goat owner did not have any antibiotics on hand. I won’t ever make that mistake again, but thanks to the lovely government you have to have a vet prescribe them now, so that makes it so much harder to obtain. Panicking, I reached out to a few people, local farmers, and luckily one of them had what I needed and was willing to help! He wouldn’t even take payment when I tried to pay for them. I love our little community ❤️
About 36 hours later she no longer had a fever. At this point I’m begging her to deliver because we are STILL fighting ketosis.
Then on Monday at about 3:30 PM I checked the cameras and immediately saw her pushing. I ran over to the barn and called my good friend as well. She wasted no time coming over to help because we all had a bad gut feeling about this birth. Boy were we right!!
We watched her push a couple of times but nothing was presenting after about 30 minutes. That’s your window when you should check if nothing is happening. Sure enough first baby was coming butt first with no legs presenting. Bad!! April, being more knowledgeable than me, jumped into action and somehow got that baby out. He was nearly dead. The cord had been compressed in the birth canal too long. She worked and worked and then he finally cried. Still not great but breathing.
We waited a little longer and the next one still wasn’t coming. April could only reach feet. Mama goat was not pushing or trying to help. She must have been exhausted. We made the decision to just try and get the baby out. Thank God Lily is big because the baby came out with its head backwards. This was the little girl. I don’t know how she made it but she did!!
Third came an odd way as well. I can’t remember which body part was presenting. Not sure if we even knew. Again, April pulled this baby! This one was a HUGE boy! Over 8.5 lbs.
Lastly, a fourth. Presenting head backwards. We tried and tried to bring the head around. The only time the Mama would push would be when we were inside her. Pushing against us when we tried to reposition. We made the call for the fourth time just to pray and pull. A girl. She came out lifeless. She passed before we even got her out. We tried to revive her with no success.
You read on all of the goat pages that you have to have to pull a certain way or push back and reposition. It's honestly easier said than done with a mama pushing against you when you try to push back. I am just thankful that Lily is a big goat or we would have lost them all.
After a few hours the babies weren’t getting up like they should. I made the call to bring them home and start bottle feeding. It took two days before they began standing. Now, they’re four days old and doing wonderful! They will be house goats for a few more days and then I will put them out in our mother-baby stall.
Lily is doing well and the babies are growing and chugging bottles. It ended so much better than it could have and I owe it all to my good friend who jumped in to help and is always there for me!! A good friend/goat mentor is invaluable.
We have one more doe to kid. Please help me pray for an easily delivery for her and us.
