Kidding: Goat Pregnancy and Labor

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Pay close attention to your does to know when they are pregnant and when they may go in to labor.
Pay close attention to your does to know when they are pregnant and when they may go in to labor.
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“Goat School,” by Janice Spaulding, is a must-have guide for anyone who has, is about to get, or dreams of one day owning goats.
“Goat School,” by Janice Spaulding, is a must-have guide for anyone who has, is about to get, or dreams of one day owning goats.

Looking to add some goats to your homestead? Goat School (Down East, 2011), by Janice Spaulding, is part manual, part cookbook, and is perfect for homesteaders looking to own goats for fun or for more self-sustainability. This excerpt, which discusses tips for knowing the signs of pregnancy in your does and delivering goat kids, is from the section “Breeding Goats and Health.”

Goat Kidding: The Signs of Pregnancy

99.9 percent of the time the whole kidding procedure will go smoothly, and it will progress in the following fashion:

Goats are like women in their pregnancy. Some get swollen legs, some get really cranky, and some moan and groan and complain. Others go through their pregnancy and you would never know they are pregnant! We had one Angora doe that we didn’t realize was even bred until spring shearing; the shearer flipped her over and lo and behold there was an udder forming!

How do you know when your goat is ready to deliver? Watch. The poor girl will get crankier as she gets closer. Some girls produce a lot of mucous. Some of it is stringy and can hang down quite a ways, even dragging on the ground. This is a sign that labor may take place in a short time or within a few days. Recordkeeping comes in really handy at this juncture, more about paperwork later. Our NanC goes 4 or 5 days with a drippy butt, and other goats do not have any mucous at all. Some of them, as soon as I see the mucous string, go into the kidding pen. This is especially true of Angoras.

  • Published on Dec 3, 2014
Tagged with: birth, goat, kidding, labor
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