Ok I am a first timer with this so I know that I may sound redundent to other posts or may ask silly questions.
I have a ND that ( I think) is pregnant. I say I think because her utters are really pronounced now and she was running with my buck. We have since seperated them, around Christmas. I am not sure when she is due though as I do not know when they might have mated.
She lays down alot and since Christmas (or a few days before) there has been mucus ( a little here and there) comming out. Some times is is like a glob others is is very minute. Is that normal? She seems to breath heavly when laying down, and sometimes when she gets up.
This is her first kidding so I am not sure what to expect. She rubs the fence often. I have noticed her getting next to the fence when the male is around and stuck her rear in his face. LOL. But only seen that one time. I kept a close check on her for about a week and then decided she is not delivering anytime soon so I check on her every so often now.
I looked at the picture of the prolaps that someone had posted. She has a poturtion (spelling) when laying down and I cal still see mucus.
She was looking big around the middle now it is not so much. I try to fill for her ligaments but I am not sure if what I am feeling are the ligaments or not, if so they are still hard.
I just need help understanding what is going on.
Like I said her utters are really big but not as hard as they were. She will not let me feel too much and I thought I saw movement about 2 weeks ago in her belly but now nothing. I have tried to sit and feel but she does not go for that too much. She is trying to but my other goat when she gets around her as well. But that was nothing unusual because she did that from the day that we brought her home. She has always showed her dominance with this goat.
She does still eat normally her grain and hay.
Thanks for any help that you may give me so that I understand this better.
Replies
Congratulations! I'm glad everything went so well! It usually does about 95% of the time.
In the future, you don't really have to worry about gloves if you're just cleaning up the kids. I never use gloves unless I'm going inside a doe. If you yourself were pregnant and/or had open wounds on your hands, gloves could be important if the doe had some sort of disease or infection, but that's pretty rare. You are at greater risk when butchering animals bare-handed and I don't know anyone who wears gloves to butcher. I have a friend whose brother got a terrible staph infection after butchering chickens when he had a cut on his hand.
Congrats!!!
Thank you for the help. I went out yesterday morning to feed my goats and what I thought I had felt were her ligaments because they were gone, I could not feel what I had been feeling before at all. She delivered yesterday about 3:14 and 3:30. She had trips. Was not expecting what happened though. She was up and moving eating hay then layed down. The mucus came out but no blood ting to it. I had just moved my other female to the other side with the males, went inside for about 5 minutes came back out sat down to watch her and then she started hollering. I seen the sack, scared me to death, was not sure if it was the right way or not. I had time to get my gloves on and then she delivered the 1st one, was working on getting it cleaned up and then the 2nd one came, with the water breaking then (I think), thought she was through cleaned up the hay, but had a feeling that that was not all. She was moving around, changing sided then the next one came. I did not have time to do anything for that one, no gloves or anything. It popped out really quick with the afterbirth. I was hoping to have a girl but she had 3 boys. All appear to be doing great too. Thanks again for the help.
Usually they kid about a month after their udder starts to fill with milk. Since she has freshened before, her udder will probably fill up completely before she kids, so keep looking at it every day. Rubbing on the fence doesn't have anything to do with pregnancy other than she itches. She could have dry skin or lice or the skin on her belly is stretched tight, so she's rubbing on the fence to scratch herself. I have one doe that drags her chest on the ground sometime -- LOL!
Also, most goat's bellies look really round when they're pregnant, but the day they give birth, the kids usually drop, and the upper part of the belly looks sunken. Here is a picture of one of my goats shortly before kidding:
http://nigeriandwarfgoats.ning.com/photo/lizzie-hollow?context=user
This is the same goat a day or two earlier:
http://nigeriandwarfgoats.ning.com/photo/lizzie-and-coco?context=user
Hope that helps!