Georgie's Curious Problem

 

  Once all the dust of Gwen's kidding excitement had settled, we were left with two tiny little goatlings living in our kitchen. Gwen's two doelings, Frankie and Georgie were absolute dolls, but we did have a lot of trouble with little Georgie at first.

  The tiny thing just would not take a bottle. Try as we might, when you put the nipple in her mouth she just would not suckle. We tried two or three different styles of nipples including one made especially for weak kids. I even tried putting a pin hole in the end of the finger a rubber glove and seeing if she would nurse off the softer material. No luck.

  Determined not to lose this little one, we resorted to tube feeding her. Tube feeding is not as scary as it sounds and in this case, I am absolutely certain it kept Georgie alive. Every few hours we would fill a syringe with about 2oz of warm colostrum and pass a small, flexible tube into Georgie's mouth and down into her stomach. The only dangerous thing about tube feeding is that you can accidently pass the tube down the wrong pipe and end up in the kid's lungs instead of the stomach. Dumping liquid into the lungs is a great way to lose a kid fast. It's important to pass the tube slowly and pause when you reach the back of the throat to let the baby swallow the tube. Do not push forward while the kid is vocalizing. Obviously, this is no fun for the kid, but the key is to stay calm and move slowly and steadily  Once the tube is in place, we like to push just a tiny amount of liquid out then wait to make sure the kid is breathing normally and not coughing. If all goes smoothly, you can quickly give a weak kid all the nutrition she will need until she can mature enough to learn to nurse properly.

  Every feeding time we would try again to get Georgie to suckle. We tried tickling her throat and her tail. We tried having her start to suckle on our finger then switch to the bottle. We even tried putting a little molasses on the nipple to entice her to try it. Every time, we would have to resort to tube feeding her to keep her going.

  The odd thing was other than being a bit smaller than her sister, Georgie seemed fine. She was up and bouncing around as much as day old kids normally do. She was talking to her sister and to us in little goaty chirps. She just would not take that nipple!

  After about a day and a half of tube feedings, we finally got her to make a couple of tiny sucks on the nipple by getting her under Big Onion's chin and making sucking noises ourselves while holding the nipple in her mouth. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

  In the meantime, Eve had kidded her one little doeling, Turnip. Both were doing great and Eve was making lots and lots of milk. We decided to bundle Gwen's two little girls up and bring them out to see if the real thing would hold more appeal to Georgie.

  Trying to get two squirming kids from the house to the milk room without letting Gwen see or hear them was quite the challenge. Eventually we got Eve up on the milk stand and tucked Georgie girl under her and don't you know that little kid started nosing around and found Eve's udder. Within minutes she was nursing away like a little pro. I guess there really is nothing like the real thing!

  At the next feeding after this, Georgie finally starting suckling from the bottle. I got so excited I yelled and dropped the bottle, splashing both of us with milk and half scaring the little goat out of her wits! Thankfully, she forgave me my clumsiness and went right back to drinking from her bottle like she'd been doing it her whole life!

  Since then both girls have been growing quickly and taking their bottles with no problems! Eve is making more than enough milk to split between the three babies with the help of a little formula here and there, and the girls crack us up constantly with their little monkey sounds and happy, hoppy little dances.

  I have to say I'm not that surprised that one of Gwen's kids would give us so much trouble since Gwen herself is the princess of the barnyard and has given us all manner of headaches in the past. As for Georgie, I guess the little brat just wanted a taste of the real deal!

Banished Baby Goats

  For their first few weeks of life, we often keep the bottle baby goats in the house. We use dog crates and xpens to keep them contained to certain area where we line the floor with pee pads. It's a lot of work, but we think it's safer and easier than trying to keep them outside when they are so vulnerable and need several feedings a day.

  Francesca and Lucia are no long small and vulnerable. They are over 15lbs now and can hop right out of our shorter xpen and onto the coffee table. They had a knack for peeing on the couches and loved to parkour off the furniture, us, the dogs, and the walls at top speed! Since they have turned into downright maniacs in the house, the baby girls are now living outside full time.

 Don't fret though, they are not locked into the backyard pen all the time. In fact, they have access to our large and slightly overgrown backyard most of the day. They spend their nights cozy in the pen with a nightlight and a thick bed of hay for snuggling up to sleep. Goats around here have it very rough.

 They are still getting three bottles a day, but both girls have started nibbling on grass and leaves. They are also chowing down on the goat feed we leave out for them between bottles. I really don't think we've ever had kids who transitioned to real food so quickly and easily.

  We are still loving the bottles we got from Premier 1 Supplies. I was afraid that as they grew, the babies would have trouble with the small size of the prichard teats, but these girls tank down 13oz very quickly with no problems at all.

  While we do miss having the girls around all the time, they are just out the back door and still get plenty of love and attention. Pretty soon they will be big enough to start having adventures in the pastures like real goats!

From bottle to teat and back again

  Normally it takes about 3-4 days for a mother goat to stop producing colostrum laced milk so when Francesca and Lucia, the baby goat girls, reached 4 days old, it was time to switch them from their mother's very carefully heat treated colostrum to regular goat milk. Luckily, we recently added Elanore to the goat herd. She's a big LaMancha doe who we tested for CAE just about the moment she stepped hoof on the farm. Thankfully she tested negative, and we have actually been freezing her milk since she got here just in case we needed to bottle raise any of the positive does' kids.

 Early on we decided to see if we could have the kids feed directly from Elanore instead of using bottles. We used this method very successfully with Thea and Gwenny.

 
   Both girls actually latched on quite quickly and drank until they were drunk with milk.

 Elanore didn't seem to mind having these two little monster feeding on her one bit as long as there was feed in her bucket.

  Unfortunately, Josie, the girls bio-mom, was onto us and started giving us the stink eye from the next room.

So full. 

  We tried having the girls nurse directly a couple more times and unless Elanore was secured on the milk stand, she was less than pleased with the two little ones attaching themselves to her udder. Ultimately, we decided that it was more work to try and tote the two girls out to the milk room several times a day and risk the wrath of Josie than it would be to just milk Elanore ourselves and make bottles for the girls so we have gone back to bottle feeding the beasts. 

  In a related note, we have just discovered these bottles from Premier 1 Supplies, and I cannot recommend them enough! The Pritchard teats screw securely onto the bottles so no wrestling on the leaky rubber ones. They also have an air flow valve that lets air back into the bottle as the little ones nurse so no more collapsing nipples and stopping to let air back in the bottle. Plus the bottles themselves are marked with ounces for easy measuring at feeding time. These bottles have seriously made life with bottle babies SO much easier!