Quit Mansplaining Raising Dairy Goats To Me: A Blog

I sell a lot of goats to first-time goat buyers. And written into my sales agreement is, “If you have a health question, ask.” But more importantly, “…if you lose a goat unexpectedly, reach out to me.” Believe me, I won’t have all the answers. But odds are, your vet won’t, either. If I can point you in the right direction, I will. And if I can help with your loss, I will. Just ask. Ask directly–tell me what you lost, and ask me how I can fix it–but please, ask.

I was seven when we got our first goats, a white, horned nanny, and a white, horned billy. We named them Nanny and Billy. The first time Nanny kidded, her firstborn was stillborn. The second was alive. And that sums up raising goats. Forty-five years later, I walked out twice this year to newly delivered kids, where the firstborn was stillborn. It guts me every time. I try so hard to be present at every birth. Still, sometimes you miss them. I’ve been there, assisted, and still delivered stillborns. It happens. But when you miss it, you beat yourself up and you assume there was a problem you could’ve fixed, if only…so I try really hard to never miss a delivery.

But if you have goats, you’re going to lose goats. I waver, when I sell newbies goats, between being giddy and excited for them, and being bluntly realistic with them. I tell them to go learn about things like urinary calculi and goat polio and clostridial infections and coccidiosis. If they’re breeding, I tell them to research toxemia and milk fevers and how best to sort dystocias.

Goats have a steep learning curve. The bad stuff is going to happen, and you figure out what it is and how to deal with it in real time. If you’re lucky, you live close to a vet who knows something about goats. But you probably don’t. You figure this stuff out while burying the mistakes.

I once had a doe collapse after delivery. In hindsight, probable ketosis. My vet (not my current vet) ran an i.v. bolus of calcium. She was dead in under 60 seconds. Milk fever was a good guess, but the wrong one. I find oral calcium supplements to be a more gentle and safer way to address the possibility now. I loved that doe.

You need to learn at the onset, how to forgive yourself and move on when you get it wrong. And you’re going to have to accept, quickly, that you’re not really the one in charge here. With goats in particular, you can do every single thing right. In spite of that, there will come a day when you look over to see your favorite buck, who was eating his breakfast five minutes earlier, on the ground seizing. When he finally gets back onto his feet, it will become obvious he’s blind. Rapid, aggressive treatment will save him–and thankfully it wasn’t your first rodeo, and you knew what to do–but he may never regain full sight.

Or you’ll walk out at seven a.m., in barely freezing temperatures, and your favorite doe kid will have done the impossible, caught her leg freakishly in the gap between her barn and her fence, and got stuck outside overnight…and because of the way her leg was trapped, blood flow was cut off to her foot, and you’ll have to euthanize her five days later. The vet won’t entertain the idea of an amputation, even though she was your best kid that year, and you were willing to pay. I miss you, Marta.

If the squares in your fence are too big, that big oaf of a wether will get his head stuck, and if he doesn’t hang himself, you’ll for sure entertain the thought of killing him while you try to free him. If the squares are too small, that one adventurous but clumsy doe is going to catch a leg while trying to jump out, resulting in a repulsive compound fracture that can’t be cast, and your vet will agree when you decide the best course of action is to shoot her. (And yeah, at some point you might find yourself going to Google to figure out how best to humanely shoot a goat, because the vet is out of town, and because this degree of suffering can’t wait. Given enough time, you’ll get good at it. But it won’t ever get easier.)

I’ve seen a lot of neat (and horrible) things. Early on, in the late ’80s, one of my LaMancha does developed hydrops during her pregnancy. She was closely monitored by a vet familiar with the condition, and she and her kids survived. Statistically speaking, I’ll never see that again. I have had one cloudburst (false) pregnancy. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible if I hadn’t been there “when her water broke.” She released a staggering amount of fluid…and no kids.

I once had a kid born with an extra foot. That was cool. He went on to have a career as a weed eater for a conservation program. I’ve had two significant deformities, both dead at birth. One kid had a normal front end, but his back end was just a ball of tissue, and the hind legs were growing out of his back. He was delivered with two normal sisters who remain in my herd. The other was a massive kid with a spinal deformity and exposed brain that ended in an emergency c-section. The doe survived, and she lives in the retirement pasture. I wasn’t comfortable trying a v-back.

In the case of random deformities, I don’t assume genetic anomalies, and I don’t automatically jump to pull them from my breeding program. I think sometimes things just go wrong. But of course if one doe were to have a repeat deformity, or if one bloodline exhibited the same, I would cull.

I have had tiny, mummified kids delivered with term kids. Last year, I fished out handfuls of tiny bones from a doe who had a healthy kid and then kept pushing. The second kid had died at some point, and mostly dissolved. A couple years ago, a doe who had delivered a large set of triplets, and passed the placenta, spit out a tiny fourth kid two days later, deceased. I sure feel bad for missing that one, but it doesn’t make sense to go looking for lost kids in does who deliver normally and clean. (Yes, we treat these does with antibiotics and monitor; they have always settled again without issues.)

This year, after 45 years, I got my first true hermaphrodite (terminology has changed over the years, and my education is old school, so pardon me if you feel a different description is better). This kid has female external genitalia, teats, and testicles. I don’t know what we’re going to do with her. Part of me is tempted to ask the vet about castrating her, but the realistic part says we should process and eat her. This is another one of these things I think is more random than genetic, but if you’re worried, just know she’s a meat goat, not a registered LaMancha.

I did have live, healthy kids delivered 13 hours apart once. I wouldn’t have believed that was possible if I hadn’t seen it.

Anyway, I’ve delivered a lot of kids, I’ve raised a lot of goats, and I’ve seen a lot of cool things. I know if you’ve had goats for any length of time, you have, too. There’s been a fair amount of loss along the way, and I suppose that’s the way it’s designed. Goats are the most fun you’re ever going to have. But probably the least, too. I guess it’s worth it.