Last Wednesday morning I arrived to feed and took a real good look at all goats to see if they had any mucus coming from their vaginas and if the area around their hips has sunken in at all. These are both signs that birth will happen within hours or at least a day or two. One goat in particular had both these signs and so I figured that she would either give birth later that day or probably sometime during the night. Births with goats for some reason happen a lot at night or maybe because that's always been my experience that I feel that way. Anyway, I fed as normal and went about my day.
The next morning imagine my surprise when the youngest of the goats was there to greet me at the gate with bloody muscus coming from her vagina...that means she has in fact given birth. Her baby is no where in sight and because she is just a year old and unexperienced I think that maybe I should go looking for this baby. On top of that....another goat is missing...the one that I had expected to go into labor soon.
So off I trotted into the pasture and found the new baby who looked just fine and just beyond her was the goat that was missing and she was in fact in labor...or so I thought. As I approached I could see that she was down on her side and she had a head, ears, tongue and the front two hoofs out of the birth canal and so I just stopped right there and figured that I'd leave well enough alone and go on about my business. This particular goat gave birth last year with no problem....she seemed to be doing fine and leaving her alone was the best for everyone involved. I fed as normal, checked mail, paid some bills, took a look at the pool and went home.
I did some chores around here, told my husband what was going on and went back up to see how she was doing around 11:30 a.m.
As I looked out in the pasture I couldn't see mama goat and so I figured that I best go see what was going on.
When I saw mama goat I could see that labor hadn't progressed and called on my friend Andy who has raised a lot more goats than I have and he's raised Boer Goats. I've only had milk goats and although they are both goats, there are differences in the way they give birth and other things. Andy's advice was to wait a bit longer and if she hadn't progressed then to call him because maybe we'd have to pull the baby.
So I waited all that I could which was about an hour and called him. He arrived and we walked out into the pasture together and as he approached mama he could see that she was in trouble. What he saw with his eyes was not one head but two. And this was probably the reason that mama had not progressed anymore in her labor. He knew immediately that both these babies were dead. We have no way of knowing exactly how long she had been laboring but once the birth process begins, if the fetus does not come out within 30 minutes or so you begin to have problems. So he got a piece of mule tape (it's a flat rope) and was able to get it around one head and pull that baby out, and then he pulled the other out.
One baby was huge...it must have weighed at least 5 or 6 lbs. That is very unusual for a goat...normally they weigh between 1.5 and 3 lbs. The other dead baby was much more the normal size and we were just sad that this mother had been suffering for so long. It's quite unusual for them to deliver two at the same time...I'd be safe in saying that this is an extremely rare instance although it does happen...it is rare.
Mother goat happy to be shed of her problem is now heading straight for the barn and water and as she is lumbering toward the barn I see another sack appear and she gives birth to a third baby. We are fairly certain this one is too probably dead because he has been in the birth canal waiting to be born for lord only knows how long. But when we reach him he is struggling and so we quickly clean him off. We get the muscus out of his lungs and nose and do a quick little mouth to snout air blowing to see if he responds. Which he does. He's tiny and he's wet but he is alive.
Back to the barn we go with baby and Andy is able to catch momma and we put them in a horse stall. Drop in some hay, give momma a bucket of water and wait to see if she will accept him.
After an hour or so and she is showing no interest we decide to take matters into our own hands and milk momma so that baby can get some of that first milk with the anti-bodies that he needs to survive down him. His suckling is not very strong and so we take a syringe and fill it with milk that we have collected and make sure that he is able to take as much as his little belly will hold. Then we wait again.
Andy has errands to run and so do I but we meet up again about 3 hours later to see if momma is bonding with baby. We find that she is still not paying him any attention but Andy say's that this is kinda normal behavior with what she has been through. He says that if we can just get enough milk to feed him for a couple of days, then when he begins to pee and poop and momma can smell her scent through that, then she will take him as she should have done in the beginning. We feed him again making sure that he had a full belly and left.
When I arrived Friday morning I was pretty sure that he would not be alive but to my surprise he was alive and trying very hard to stand. Momma was paying more attention to him but I could see that he was still not nursing from her and so I fed him until he went to sleep. I fed everyone else then and did a few more chores and then left for home coming back sometime around noon to feed him again. When I arrive he was almost standing, momma was very interested and so I fed him again and thought that I would check on him one more time before I would leave him for the night.
When I arrived home I had a message from the Dr. that told me she would be home the next morning but that I was to go ahead and feed and she would call me when she arrived home. So I went back up to her house for the last check and fed him and was extremely pleased with how he was doing.
When I got home I sat down and wrote out the whole story for the Dr. and told her how to feed him unless she could see that momma and baby had bonded and that I would be in touch with her after I got back from my dad's.
So Saturday morning I fed and could see that real strides had been made in his recovery and although not nursing yet, I could see that he was going to probably make it. The hardest part had been the first 24 hours and he seemed to be beginning to thrive.
The Dr. and family arrived home around 4 p.m.....so much for arriving 1st thing in the morning...had I known that I would have checked on him immediately after I returned home but that's water under the bridge. I went back up there to give them instructions on how to milk and feed and milked momma for what I figured would be the last time as she was really paying a lot of attention and beginning to be very protective of baby. I was finally able to take a breath and figured that we'd won this battle.
I had a call from the Dr. on Sunday around noon and she just said that the baby was dead. Didn't give me any details and said that she'd already disposed of the body etc. I was saddened and shocked. He seemed to be doing so well and I really thought that even though he'd had a very rough beginning that he was going to make it through and thrive.
I don't even pretend to know why things happen like this...I want to say that maybe he had some sort of defect that I had no way of knowing and that Mother Nature did what she does best and took him before it was evident that he would have to be put down. So I'm sad but I do realize that Nature sometimes knows best.
The last goat delivered a lovely set of twins without incident on Sunday morning. So we have the agony of the death of triplets and the ecstasy of twins and a single.
No comments:
Post a Comment