Our first doe is due February 28th, and since she is the first one scheduled for kidding, we have been working to prepare for the soon to come kids.
Durango’s Little Red has been prepping herself the last 3 weeks, getting a noticeable udder 1 1/2 months before her due date, and getting a huge belly.
We went through our birthing kit and did a quick inventory, finding that we’re pretty much good to go. We have iodine, umbilical cutters, floss, rubber gloves (both small and long), Cayenne Pepper Tincture, B vitamins and BoSe, lots of towels… only lacking in emergency electrolytes and ProBios (we always give a couple doses of each to our Does after kidding). So the shopping list is pretty short this year, yay!
We took a look at the birthing stall, which has been serving as a hay storage room. The excess hay was moved to our official storage room, the stall was cleaned thoroughly and we sprinkled Diatomaceous Earth (DE) around all the edges before covering the ground with a thick layer of good hay. The DE will kill any bugs hiding in the corners or crawling through any bits of hay.
The mineral feeders were cleaned out and ready for fresh mineral, the hay feeder was cleared up, and our separator (we made one for separating kids at night, or for separating mothers in the stall with their kids) was cleaned up and moved to a more out of the way location.
Shopping list was put together, the kidding stall cleaned and prepped… what’s left to get prepared?
We re-worked our feeding rations and budget to allow for new kids and increase in the appetite of expectant mothers. We upped Red’s alfalfa pellet rations from 3/4 lb/day to 2lbs/day, which she is very happy about.
Only things left to do: Make sure all goats are up on their copper (due next week), get things on our shopping list, and give Red a dairy trim end of next week.
NOTE: for those who don’t know, a dairy trim is a simple hair cut only trimming the fur on the tail, udder and legs. We won’t be doing a full body trim on any of our does till summer time, when its warmer. Why are we bothering to give this doe a trim when she’s due end of February then? Because a simple dairy trim will allow any mess from giving birth to be cleaned up a lot faster and with less discomfort to the doe. If we didn’t give her a dairy trim, she’d end up with goopy stuff sticking to the fur on her behind that would stay there and dry, looking nasty and feeling quite uncomfortable to the doe.
We’re feeling pretty good about this coming year, very satisfied with the bucks we chose with our does, and very happy with how healthy the whole herd has been.
We’ve already added a new page for our “New Arrivals 2015” we’re SO excited! We can hardly wait to get pictures of new kids when they arrive to share with everyone!
God bless, and Happy kidding!
