We have just two goats, a 8 mo old doeling (Audra Belle) and a mama (Spot) who is due January 11th. They are housed in a pen about 15'x15' with a sort of lean-to arrangement against the outer wall of our detached garage as a shelter. It works really well for now, but I'm going to need to come up with something else before kidding time, and I'm not quite sure what that should look like. Does it need to be fully enclosed? We're in Southern Arizona, so the coldest it ever gets is a rare drop to about 20 degrees overnight, and then most of the year it would be almost unusable with the heat. I could do little semi-enclosed stalls at one end of the pen area , although that's probably stretching my limited talents as a builder far beyond their true capacity. OR I could just take Spot into the garage to kid...but if I do that, Audra Belle is going to bawl the entire neighborhood out of bed because she'll be all alone. ARGH! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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The garage will not be hard to clean up if she kids in there. Our kidding barn has concrete floors, and it is cleaned up completely between kiddings. Your doe will be fine kidding just about anywhere, but like Rachel said, kids can get hypothermia and be dead within 15 minutes of birth. It's happened here.
The other thing is that when kids are born, they don't have great muscle control until they've been on the ground for a few minutes because they've never had to do things like hold up their head. So, their mouth will wind up on the ground. The ideal is straw because star is long enough that it won't get inhaled by a kid. Shavings are second best. Small shavings can wind up in the kid's mouth, and if you've unlucky, it could cause them to choke if you didn't notice it was there and get it out. The worst is if a kid is born on dirt and they get dirt in their mouth. They'll be fine initially, but as the parasite eggs hatch and the coccidia start to multiply, you'll have one heck of a fight on your hand. I had a doe accidentally kid in a dirt-covered area once, and two of her three kids died within a few months. We were never really able to get the parasites under control in them.
Find out who your husband has been talking to. I've had cattle people act completely aghast at the fact that I need to be there when kids are born, but there is a huge difference between a 70-pound calf and a 3-pound kid. A calf does not get hypothermia that easily. Most cattle producers around here don't even have shelters for their cattle. Just think of how fast a cup of water would freeze compared to a 5-gallon bucket, and a 5-gallon bucket only weighs half as much as a calf.
No, not true. I have tried tracking it to see whether they are consistent or not. Most are not, although I have had some that always kid at night. I think more do it during the day.
Katie L Zollinger said:
I think he just doesn't want "his space" invaded. The garage is already the backup plan, whether he knows and/or acknowledges it or not.
I could put a heat lamp or, probably more safely, an oil radiator in the goat shelter....but she may not want to have her kids in there at all.
Why does it sound like all goats give birth at night? That can't possibly be true....can it?
PS wood chips are fine. :)
Well, as long as your temps aren't freezing, your hubby is most likely right. SHE will be fine. However, her WET kids are at high risk of hypothermia and frost bite if temps are low. If it were me, I'd put that foot down, and tell him that YOU want to talk to all these "experts" he's talked with, and then insist that you have the garage at the VERY least, as your back up plan. It's not going to be a big stinky mess, if that' what he's thinking. A tarp on the floor, a good layer of straw, shavings or hay, and she'd be good to stay for some time without any smell.
A week to go and hubby is refusing to let me use the garage. He says "everyone he's talked to" says she'll be fine having them out in the pen. (I'm thinking these are other husbands?) Our weather should be fine--we're having near 80's during the day dropping to no lower than 40 overnight. and our winter rains are done for the year--but the pen has a dirt floor.
I have one bale of straw that I can put down when it's clear that she's in labor, but I have to go quite a distance to get more (straw is not a local product so most local feed stores just sell wood chips.) Are wood chips okay? I will have lots of towels, as advised by Deborah, of course.
I had thought about putting down tarps over the dirt and under the wood chips for the week before kidding, just to separate her from any buildup of parasite eggs on their pen floor.
I'll be gone several hours--five, maybe--for medical testing (that I can't reschedule) two days before her due date--during the day, so at least it will be nice and warm, but I'm terrified to leave her alone. I think I will probably keep my son out of school that day just in case.
I actually bought cattle panels, because they are MUCH cheaper than livestock panels, but Deb is right. Kids can get through them. I use cheap bird netting zip tied to the bottom portion of the fence and it keeps my kids in.
Our Lowe's doesn't carry them, and we don't have Tractor Supply, etc....this is not a big area for livestock and the ground is brushy/rocky making the flat bottomed panels probably kind of impractical. Goats actually could graze our native plants and do pretty okay given enough space, I'd think, but cattle, etc, can't be raised here, so I guess I see why the panels aren't available. Frustrating, though!
You are actually not looking for cattle panels, you are looking for livestock panels, also called combination panels, which are as tall as cattle panels but have horizontals that are close enough together that kids have to think about climbing through the spaces that are higher up. Cattle panels have spaces at the bottom that are way too big. Kids can walk right through them. Hog panels are fine for little kids and pregnant does, but they are short, so some goats can easily jump them, if they want. You have to search for "livestock panels" in quotes. If you just put in the two words, you'll get mostly corral panels because the search engine is just looking for a page that has those two words on it anywhere. When you put the words in quotes, the search engine looks for those words in that order. Shipping is crazy for them, so you might find something local if you put "livestock panels" in quotes and then put a city outside of the quote marks. I don't know if you have Tractor Supply or Farm & Fleet in your area, but both of them carry them.
Sorry to hear you're not well. That must be very frustrating!
lowes has the cattle panels - seems like the closest one near you is Casa Grande? they are 16 foot long - would need a trailer to haul or people bow them couple at a time if you have a 8 foot bed on your truck. here they are $26 each. sounds like maybe at this point the garage might be the best place in the short run.
Katie L Zollinger said:
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