Letting Nature Take its Course?

Every year around February, I go into a pre-kidding prep mode—ordering supplies, cleaning the barn, managing the does’ feeding scheme, trimming feet, assembling clean towels, rounding up pop bottles, giving spring vaccines, and reviewing kidding literature.  It’s ‘last call’ visits with friends, wrapping up the only time I take care of myself, exercising, eating real food and doing other things I love (weaving for one) before I disappear off the radar screen and spend full time on the farm.

Preparing for spring kidding season always seems to prompt the same sets of questions from observers.  “When will [doe] have her kids?” and “Do you really need to be present at every birth? Won’t nature take care of things?”

I smile and answer, when the questioner is a human mother, “Was your child born on your due date?” or “Was there no one present at your child’s birth?”  The point is noted.  With a little more patience and explanation, others come to understand that there is a typical gestation period for the goats (150 days on average with a range of 149-155).  Given the possible range, we go on ‘goat watch’ a few days earlier than the due date and if the goat goes longer, we might be observing the doe for a week. And that week blends into the timing with another doe and so on and so forth.  Before we know it, we’ve been monitoring goats and birthing babies for two months straight sometimes.

While it’s probably my favorite time of year, I admit to becoming so exhausted it takes its toll on my outlook and health by the end. So why is it that I feel we have to be present for these births?  Doesn’t nature take care of things?

Nature is a wonderfully, magnificent thing – but we’ve fundamentally and already intervened even before the kidding season—we’ve impacted the goats with how we breed, our choice of stock, our feeding protocol, containing them in paddocks, controlling their regimen to name a few dimensions.  So we’ve made it our responsibility to ‘interfere’ at kidding time to correct for these farmer-made influences.

In the field, weather can take its toll, claiming kids born on freezing days without shelter, difficult deliveries can end with dead kids and/or dead does.  Multiple kids create challenges for the does and can benefit from our intervention—producing enough milk; eating enough to support the extra kids; having udders that become unbalanced or worse, mastitic, as kids favor one side over another; getting chapped udders that require that we monitor feed and nutrient intake; helping kids nurse from both teats and hand milking when they don’t.

So the challenge is to find the balance—to help where necessary but back off, and not be a cowboy or try to be a hero.  Under most circumstances we know the doe’s expected kidding date.  Assuming the weather cooperates (does have been known to wait out a storm), there are several visible signals that kidding is imminent.  Generally, labor begins and we monitor the situation—color of discharge, softening ligaments, and contractions tell us what’s likely to happen.  Once these things get set in motion, we keep an eye on the situation relatively closely.

In the best case, the doe takes care of things and you have a kid on the ground, cleaned, standing and nursing in a relatively short period of time.  This season we’ve been blessed with many successful births, including our first sets of quadruplets (two sets on the same day near the start of our season)!  We’ve have yearlings and veterans drop their kids with relative ease, the kids standing and nursing with just their mom’s natural assistance.

But too many times, the doe may not dilate sufficiently, labor fails or there is an abnormal presentation and then you have to decide when and how to intervene.  That usually means scrubbing up, lubing up and going in to explore.

This season we’ve had to assist, primarily in small (or young) does because the kid is moving too slowly in the birth canal, leaving it too long in a risky situation.  But the presentations have been normal so we assist just enough to move things along, or help the mom clean up the kid as more are on the way.

When the kid does emerge, it is covered in the slippery, warm sack, slithering out to the ground.  We rush to clear the membrane from its face, stimulate the kid and listen for its first cry.  Only after that do we check to see what the gender is.

There’s more ‘goober’ involved than I ever would have expected I would be able to tolerate.  Surprisingly, I am not at all put off by the fluids or afterbirth.  The process is so amazing that the minute I clean up from a birth, I’m already thinking about the next one.  It is bittersweet when the last doe kids for the season.

But sometimes things go awry.  At 2am on a recent morning I went to the barn for a simple goat check only to find Missy, no longer sporting the normal type of discharge as she had at 10:30  that evening.  Instead the color and type of discharge told me something was wrong  Washing and lubing, I went in to find feet no longer in a sack—indicating that help was necessary quickly if the kids were to emerge alive.  Her cervix was very tight so I quickly realized getting anything through would be difficult.  The situation was made even more troubling because the head of the kid had slipped backward—no way for it to make it out.  I tried to realign the head, snout first but still no luck.  My arm was literally being strangled by the ever narrowing cervix.  With a vet’s help and meds, we might have been able to relax the cervix but by the time I knew how much trouble we were in, the damage had been done, and critical time had elapsed.  The outcome was such that I don’t even want to describe it in any further detail but suffice it to say that it wasn’t good.  I spent the next 24 hours nursing severe bruises on arms—but Missy suffered far worse.

And then there are times when the intervention works as we hope, helping to coax out a kid that might otherwise die in utero.  We’ve had several good saves this season—so perhaps we are finding the balance.

I have enormous respect for and awe of nature—and when its course runs well, even more so.  But I am glad that I’m getting better at recognizing when our intervention is appropriate and helpful.  Even if we play only an assisting role or in only a small percentage of the births, it will have been worth it to be on hand—and what’s a few months of sleep deprivation anyway?

-Lisa

Comments

[Naimhe]

What an excellent dissertation on kidding! I dread spending February and early March nights in the barn but I do it anyway, and there's nothing so joyful as baby goats entering the world with me looking on and lending a hand.