I have a doe, Spot, that kidded last week. She had triplets. We also have a doeling, Audra Belle, from last year's kidding who is nine months old (we bought her dam bred.) Today, I caught Spot letting Audra Belle nurse. Separating them is not really an option as the two of them plus the kids are my whole "herd" and Audra Belle yells her head off when separated from her mama. Do I just assume that Spot knows what she's doing and there's enough milk for everybody?
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Maybe she's just a quirky girl. Spot does like to do things her own way, that's certain.
I was under the assumption that she had a dead half because she'd previously had mastitis. However, it sounds like maybe she had kids that favored one side, which is the why the other side didn't produce? You can't really make any assumptions about the condition of her udder when she has three kids nursing on her, especially if she had a lopsided udder last year. It would look very different if you separated the kids for 12 hours. If the kids are nursing on both sides, it is highly unlikely that she has mastitis, especially if she's making enough to feed triplets.
Spot had "half an udder" when we were milking her before....just gave a minimal amount out of the one side. Now, after kidding, she's inflated on the side that didn't give much milk before, but slack on the side that we were getting a lot of milk out of before. The kids are drinking out of both sides, however, so there must be something to get from either one.
She was hard to dry off and I wonder with our inexperience if she didn't get some mastitis on the formerly high-producing side and we didn't catch it. We were not monitoring her udder as we stopped easing off the milkings and started just leaving it alone. I take it that's not the right thing to do?
I wouldn't be too worried about it, except Spot only has half an udder, right?