One of the young does is having a rough start of it in the pen with the others. I noticed a couple of days ago that she was more mellow than the others. Then she started to walk with her hind legs tucked in further under herself. That was a curious sign, but the final straw was seeing her mother rejecting her on the teat. My suspicion is that the baby has been selected by mother to be left off because of math. She has three babies and two teats. I think the little one has been trying to eat too much hay from the mother’s feed to supplement for the milk she is not getting, and has caused her bowels to tighten up, or plug altogether. We are treating her for that.
This is also an opportunity to bottle feed a baby goat! We have done that before, and that particular goat has always been far more content to be close to humans than the others, so I am looking forward to the adjustment to this baby’s disposition. Obviously, we have to get her to survive her childhood first. I have taken her from the pen, then put her back, and her mother has come to the point of not just actively walking away from her, but also charging at her and hitting her with her horns, which is completely unacceptable, of course.
When we bought our first goat, and had to bottle feed her, we were also sold goat’s ‘milk replacer,’ which she was not taking well to. We were advised by someone more knowledgeable that milk replacer is a good way to kill a goat, and to just use the whole milk we buy for our family. We did that, and signs of scours quickly vanished, and she grew up to be just fine. So that is what we are doing here. We are feeding cow’s milk to a baby goat in a human baby’s bottle. I’ll probably look into some grains to supplement the lack of fat in the milk, especially as baby is so young still.
So far, so good! Little one is eating herself to tired, and then resting at feed times. She has a nice bed in a crate we have temporarily in the house, where she can be observed and kept from the others. I suspect that I will be trying her in another pen where some older kids are, and see if they won’t treat her nicely, and like just another goat rather than abusing her.
I am glad to have recognized this situation before the goat’s health deteriorated, in hindsight, there are things I will watch for in the future that might indicate a problem to me much earlier. Those indicators include a goat isolating, and being less active. Then they turned to the leg tucking, and slower walking, and finally the mother stepping away from her when she tries to feed. I suspect it is the mother’s instinct to provide good health to the two she can manage feed for, rather than mediocre care for three. Of course it is not human to think that way, but then, goats are not humans, are they? Lucky for baby there is a human around to look after her.