Found this page with fantastic illustrations of kidding positions and how to deal with them. Thought I'd share it:
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Found this page with fantastic illustrations of kidding positions and how to deal with them. Thought I'd share it:
You need to be a member of Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats to add comments!
Replies
Thanks Rachel & Deb.
As odd as it sounds, I hope they were dead, because then it wasn't my fault. Overall we've been having a pretty good kidding season. I think we had some pretty bad nutritional deficiencies the past couple of years that we're getting under control thanks to all the information that Deborah has provided, both here and in her book.
Been there, done that! If you did some damage to the kid, odds are good it was probably dead already. I once had a ribs first presentation, and I freaked out. When I found a leg, I started pulling before I had a clear idea of where all the kid's part were located, and the skin started tearing where the leg attaches to the body. Then I really lost it. I eventually got the kid out, but it was dead, and I was afraid I had killed it. My oldest daughter who had just walked in the barn, visiting from college for the weekend, was convinced that the kid had been dead for awhile already. Lucky for me, we have a friend who is a pathologist, so I gave him zero details about the situation, and only said that I had a kid born dead, and asked him how you determine how long ago a baby died during the birthing process. He is a human pathologist, but the very first thing he said was that a baby that's been dead for awhile will have thin skin that is easily torn. So, whew! I felt much better about that. The other thing I've learned is that if a kid has been dead for awhile, you can rub their hair off with your fingers. I did a vaginal check on a doe that was having trouble, and when I pulled my hand out, my fingers were covered with hair. And these things mean the kid has been dead for days, not minutes.
I spend a lot of time at births on my knees, so I sit back on my heels sometimes. I've noticed that newborn kids will dive between my legs a lot. They are born with an instinct to want to put themselves into small spaces. It works for getting themselves born (heading into the birth canal) and for nursing (getting under mom) and for staying warm and hidden from predators (getting into small spaces). Almost every single challenging birth position I've ever dealt with, involved a kid that had been dead for awhile. The only challenging birth position live kids have presented me with is two kids trying to be born at once, which thankfully has only happened twice, so less than 1% of the time. However, that could certainly happen with one or two dead kids also. I'd especially see it happening with two dead kids because then you only have uterine muscles trying to push out these inanimate objects.
If I saw a foot out for half an hour with no visible progress, I'd have been trying to figure out what to do also. That is normally not a good sign. But one thing about birthing is that every birth is truly unique, and we cannot go back through time and play it out differently, so it doesn't do any good to wonder what would have happened if ______. If the kids were born dead that soon after you tried to help, then there was nothing you could have done to change this particular outcome. Kids don't just die instantly inside a doe. If the kids looked healthy and normal, the doe could have been in labor a lot longer than she was letting on, and the placenta had started to separate. As a vet professor explained it to me after a c-section with quads that were all in vastly different states of life or death, the placenta starts to separate at one end, and each kid is attached at a different spot, so when their area detaches, they lose their life support. In that case, we had a kid born dead, one that died five minutes after birth, one that needed an hour or so of TLC, and one that was born perfectly fine. Regardless of whether the kids are born, the placenta will start to separate within a certain number of hours after a doe goes into hard labor.
So, as Rachel said, don't be hard on yourself. You do what seems right at the time, and you learn from your mistakes. As I said in my previous post, the most important thing I've learned is to not panic. That is one bit of advice I think is true in 100% of birthing situations. Other than that, every situation is unique.
I remember Deb saying that a lot of times she sees issues with kids in the birthing canal like you've described, and how often those kids are dead. She has mentioned that a lot of times, the tangle in the canal happens BECAUSE they are dead, and can't move and adjust themselves as they move through the canal. Sounds to me like at least one of the two was already dead. If I were to guess, I would say it was the first, but I really don't have any experience other than what I've read here. I def. don't think you did something wrong. Sounds like you tried to let things progress, and did what you could with what you had. Don't be too hard on yourself!!
I heard a goat over the monitor doing the pushy scream at 1:35am one night this week. I was out there by 1:45 and there was one foot out. I watched her push with no visible progress for about half an hour (I've been too quick to help other times). I finally decided to feel around a bit. There was a head right at the entrance and one behind it. I *thought* the foot was associated with the head in behind but I wasn't sure. By the time we hit 45 minutes of pushing I was getting very antsy. I got the head at the entrance out and tried to pull the kid. Nothing happened. I pushed the leg back in case it didn't belong to the presenting head. Still no progress. I started crying, convinced that I was a completely incompetent goat keeper, then pulled it together and called my husband who was asleep in the house. He agreed that he would drive the goat to the vet if necessary. I had to stay home because we have a 4 month old who is nursing, as well as a toddler and 4 year old. It took me a bit to get hold of an available vet, plus we had to make absolutely sure that it was necessary because it was an hour long drive in very bad winter weather conditions. Finally I headed in and my husband was getting the car ready. He went to get the doe and found that, after an hour and a half of pushing, she had delivered twins. Both dead. I'd done some damage to the first trying to get it out.
What would others have done, given our difficulty with getting to a vet? Does it sound like I got involved too soon seeing as she eventually delivered on her own?
Oh, I'm not saying that it wouldn't cause a problem in some cases, but it is incorrect to say that the kid won't be born tail first unless it is very small. If I don't see progress in 15-20 minutes, even if it is hoof and nose first, I know something isn't right. When Giselle had the same two inches of a huge hoof sticking out for 20 minutes last month, I knew we had a problem, especially when I felt the nose less than two inches inside of her. That 5-pound kid was not coming out of her naturally, regardless of which way it was positioned.
Someone on Facebook a couple of weeks ago was telling the story of how she was trying to push a kid back into the doe so she could get her hand in there to grab the legs as the doe was trying to give birth to this kid tail first, and the woman finally gave up, and the kid shot out. But the woman had heard that she would have to go in and fish for the feet. That simply is not usually true -- at least not with NDs. If you are staring at the same little bit of tail for more than 20 minutes, something is wrong, but as long as a doe is making progress, even if it's 1/4 inch per contraction, she can probably do it. And after having a doe die from a ruptured uterus last year -- even though it was a vet who had her hands in the doe -- I am even more paranoid about putting my hands inside of a doe.
The absolute worst thing anyone can ever do in a birthing situation is panic. I've done it twice and it was horrible both times, and I have promised myself I will always stay calm. There really is no reason to panic. A perfectly healthy kid does not die within seconds if it is still inside the doe. It takes hours of labor for a kid to die. If you don't fully understand the situation before you start pulling, you can make a bad situation much worse. There is always time to sit back, carefully watch the situation, BREATHE, say a little prayer, and then slowly and carefully do something if it needs to be done -- which may include calling the vet.
Sorry, Deborah, but last year that (the babies breech) and the size and weight issue was the cause of Capri's tragedy. As you know, there are those rare conditions where the worst happens, and it did here. I can tell you for sure that if I see a breech starting again, I will absolutely panic after all that. The vet will receive my call if that baby is not out within ten minutes, not over an hour like with the first one last year (and no more without the vet) to come immediately. And I will never again ever believe it if anyone, the vet included, tells me once the first one is born, the others will be easy. Seven hours later, the other three were still inside. I will *always* follow my gut and never reason myself into listening again, telling myself I'm just over-reacting. My mind tells me that nothing like that would ever happen again, but I will feel much, much better if I see a nose and hooves every time. Last year's experience is why the images are going on the barn wall - so I will never need to refer to them if all is right in the world.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
I wondered about that too since on my first kidding last summer, the two boys presented tail first and she had no trouble pushing them out. This site appears to be a nigerian dwarf farm because I looked at the links to other pages. I think the illustrations are well done and could be helpful when trying to figure out how they're presenting if the doe seems to be in trouble.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
What I did because I can . . . (yes, I know, shame on me) . . . I opened up a word processing document and copied the text at the top, for me because I have a Mac that was Pages. After saving it, I then made the images with Grab (Windows also has a utility to do that) and put them into the document. This takes a bit of time because there are 13 images. I would have liked to just print the page either directly to the printer or to a PDF document but it cut the images in parts because of page length, bummer. Your own browser might not do that so check it to see. Also, in my word processing document, I put the web site address in the header and the author's email address in the footer so I know where it came from and can contact her later.
If I were using Windows, I would do a screen print (hold down the alt key and screen print) to put it on the clipboard; then open Paint, copy the image into Paint and then select the part of the screen print I want and copy and paste it into the word processing document. Windows has a way of selecting just the part of the screen you want but I don't remember how since I now only use it at work now. It is really the images you want. If you know how to just select the image (not the entire screen), then do that and print it for each one. I know I'm a bit nuts but I'm thinking that these will be very good on the barn wall in general but definitely for an emergency. I'm looking at it this way, if I am prepared then I won't have a repeat of last year's Capri's experience but always like Summer's forever - I had the nightmare so it's time for all happy dreams now.
Windows does not come with PDF as a print option but you can download one or buy Adobe Acrobat. Even though I have the pdf printer, I chose to buy Acrobat because of all the options it has with it. As useful computer programs go, it is really not that expensive. It's frustrating at work because the boss won't buy it and we are always printing documents to scan them to email the pdf files of them to people when we could skip the physical printing (and save all that ink!) and do it all from the computer. Lots of penny wise, pound foolish there in all areas.
The drawings and explanations are great, but I don't understand why so many people think that a doe can't give birth to a kid that is tail first. We've had lots of does do it. I have never (knock on wood) had to go fishing for a hind leg when a kid was presenting tail first. I wonder if this is more of a problem with standard breeds?
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