I have a first freshener who kidded with 3 bucklings about 12 days ago. She is eating fine and looks well overall, although she still is draining some blood from her vulva (vet told me goats can be messy for a couple weeks after birth).
My biggest concern is that she has always been my mellow doe, very calm, sweet & quiet. For the last several days, she just wanders around the pen (it's about 50 x 60 feet), bleating nonstop for the most of the day. She runs away from her kids a good bit of the time, although they are gaining weight appropriately, so I know she is nursing them. I let her out to our yard in the afternoon, where we have a number of good munchables. She happily spends an hour (or more) out there (the kids are kept in the pen) and eats her head off. She doesn't bleat at all, but will run away from her kids if they get out after her. When I put her back in the pen, she does let them nurse.
She always has good quality hay & water available and gets a good-sized helping of grain & alfalfa pellets once a day, so I know it's not hunger. She was a great mother the first week or so, but now seems to want to distance herself. Is this normal?
Because she is a first freshener, we recognize she may need help feeding those babies. They have NOT been interested in the bottle so far - it has not been enjoyable for any of us in trying to get them to take one. We are planning on separating the largest two (already 5# and almost 5#) for an 8-hour overnight starting this weekend, so that they might be more interested in taking a bottle in the morning.
I don't know what else to do. Should I be concerned?
Replies
Thanks for your answer, Deborah. I'm glad to know some first fresheners can be just nervous; it sounds like that's the case here.
I'm not hoping for any milk (although I do put her on the stand at grain time to get her used to handling), and you may have mis-read my message above. She actually has 3 kids, and the only reason we were going to separate them (for a little while) was to encourage them to take a bottle. They most emphatically have not been interested so far and even though they've gained enough weight to date, I think they're going to fall behind....I was out there for about 3 hours today & she wouldn't let them nurse at all during that 3 hours. Maybe that's normal, but the babies' sides are not plump like they have been. Anyway, that was the only reason we were going to separate.
This is fairly normal. The first year we had kids, I had a first freshener that was acting like this, so I understand your concern. As my mentor told me, some FFs are just nervous Nellies. She should be able to produce enough to feed two kids. However, she cannot produce enough to feed two kids AND you. If you want to separate her one night to see what she's producing, that's not a big deal. However, it is much too early to be separating her every night. To get her accustomed to milking, you can put her on the milkstand every day to have her grain while you milk or at least pretend to. If you can get anything, that's fine, but it probably won't be much. It's more about teaching her that it's okay for you to have her milk, as well as her babies.