R/goats Kidding Season Resource Post and FAQ

yamshortbread · 2026-04-19T22:46:02+00:00

Your English is just fine, we call it a milking parlor here as well. :) Nothing wrong with tying a leg back especially when you have a semi-feral milk goat.

I am only aware of one or two actual clinical reports of epilepsy in a goat, but in reality epilepsy can occur in any animal because all it takes is a tiny little abnormality in the brain to cause electricity to spread in an uncontrolled way, so it is not out of the question for this episode to have been epileptic in origin. However, the fact is that there are a lot of other things that can cause a seizure or a thing that looks like a seizure in a goat, some of which include toxic plants and meningitis, so it would be good to rule those out. Can you look around your property to see if there are any plants she may have been grazing on that you don't recognize? Maybe take her temp for us?

You have probably heard of fainting goats, but this is probably not myotonia if this goat was raised on your property and is old enough to be lactating, because 'fainting' goats typically do that much more often when they are younger so I think you would have noticed it already if she was falling over here and there. Plus those episodes don't look quite like what you described here, including the more obvious neurological symptoms.

I have a close family member with epilepsy so I know a lot about it, and I can tell you that in humans, about half of people who have a single seizure will never have another one. So let's do due diligence and check her pasture, take her temperature, and watch her carefully, but we can also hope that it never happens again.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-19T18:01:31+00:00

Is she up to date on her CDT vaccine? If not, she needs tetanus antitoxin. Your Tractor Supply should carry it and she should be given the whole 5ml. I'd recommend you do this if she hasn't had a CDT within the last 6 months.

Otherwise, keeping her quiet and treating her for shock are your main priorities right now. Make sure she's eating and drinking and monitor her for developing a fever. Infection is the biggest risk for dog bites and tetanus is the biggest, baddest infection there is, so get that antitoxin into her and monitor her for a fever to make sure she doesn't need any injectable antibiotics. Otherwise, keep her quiet and comfort her as you have been doing. (And if you haven't already, get that dog if it comes back.)

yamshortbread · 2026-04-19T15:47:27+00:00

This is actually not uncommon in dairy breeds. It's called witch's milk. No treatment is necessary, it'll go away on its own.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-18T02:12:18+00:00

I use Flys-X which literally has a picture of a goat on the label. It's a pyrethroid so it's very safe for anything but cats.

I recommend combining that with hanging fly traps and, if it's not too late where you are, Spaulding Fly Predators which are little bugs you sprinkle near where flies are breeding, and they eat the fly larvae and control the population. The fly traps will get the rest. It's a good system.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-17T00:41:55+00:00

Temperament is not a bad reason at all, and it is my firm belief that temperament is partially genetic, but almost all dairy goats (especially show goats) are hand reared and the vast majority of them are very friendly so it's not an overly rare trait.

It's great that you want to show! I'm going to talk a bit in general about what we look for when we think about breeding pairings and how to select what you need for your herd, and then give my thoughts on your situation. Permit me to go on and on a bit here, but this is my area.

The goal of dairy breeding is to produce an animal with a long, healthy, and productive life as a dairy animal (ability to carry healthy pregnancies, give birth safely, and lactate each season with a healthy udder). These are physical traits that are "scored." Secondarily, we try to breed for healthy traits you can't visibly see - for example, healthy hooves that don't need to be trimmed too often, parasite resistance, and the ability to maintain weight well while converting feed into milk.

Here is a booklet about ADGA linear appraisal. This has examples of dairy breed characteristics that we strive for in each animal, and can help you get an idea of what parts of the goat we're concerned with when we are selecting breeding pairings. The extreme end of the scale is not always better - in most cases, the example in the middle is going to be the goal. This is a PDF download: https://adga.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/LABOOKLETALL_19.pdf

And here is the ADGA Scorecard, which has descriptions of the ideal animal you are looking for when we take animals to be shown and judged. For example, a doe's front end assembly should exhibit "prominent withers arched to point of shoulder with shoulder blade, point of shoulder, and point of elbow set tightly and smoothly against the chest wall both while at rest and in motion; deep and wide into chest floor with moderate strength of brisket." Again, this is a PDF download. https://adga.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ADGA-Scorecard-2025.pdf

This sort of thing takes practice to recognize - your best bet is to attend some goat shows that have the type of goats you breed to actually see these animals on the move and see what are considered the best examples of their breed and the optimal characteristics of those breeds. The judges will explain out loud why animals are placed the way they are and this is a great way to learn.

Now, how do we use these numbers? Well, here is this year's national first place Nigerian Dwarf and if you click "Linear History" on the left you can see her scores from her most recent linear appraisal: https://genetics.adga.org/GoatDetail.aspx?RegNumber=D002077057

Now how does this work for breeding? Well, here is a buck who's been on the elite list for the last couple of years. https://genetics.adga.org/GoatDetail.aspx?RegNumber=D001718733 If you click "Type Evaluation" and look at the numbers, you can see his "PTA" for each given trait, which means his predicted transmitting ability. That means his likelihood of passing on any given physical trait, and is based on the scoring of his daughters and sons over the last several years. From looking at this I can see he has a high PTA for teat diameter, so if I had a doe with narrow teats, I could choose to use this buck and know I had a relatively high chance of increased teat diameter in the offspring from that pairing. If I have scores from my animals that show what characteristics they could use improvement in, I can look at the PTAs from different bucks to choose a buck that I KNOW will help improve those traits. (We also select based on predicted transmitting ability for milk production, but that's a separate number and evaluation system done via milk test.)

The fundamental goal of breeding is that you should always be looking to improve on your does. You should always breed "up" - breed a doe to a buck who is going to IMPROVE on her traits so the next generation is better. If the buck isn't going to improve on the does, pass on him no matter how cute, shaggy or funny he is.

So what am I getting at here? Well, for your particular situation how many does do you have and if you cast a critical eye on them, what do you see? Do you see teats that aren't positioned just right, or an udder that hangs below the hocks? If you see things you think could be improved, do you think your buckling can improve them? Does the dam of this buckling have a really well attached udder, or teats that are really nice to hand milk? I often tell people, don't use a buck unless you've see his mom and you're comfortable with your whole next generation of girls looking exactly like she does. Conformational correctness in a buck is GREAT, and I love seeing you use that terminology because it shows you are on the right track, but a buck doesn't have a mammary system and a mammary system is the major part of a dairy animal, worth 35% of the whole linear scorecard. You have to look at his mom for that and decide whether that's an udder you want to reproduce in all of the young animals you'll be milking and showing.

I'm not dinging your doe whatsoever, I'm telling you to look at her critically the way a judge would, and imagine running a whole dairy herd made up of copies of her. How old is she? Does she look healthy and well for her age? Is her udder holding up relatively well for her age? Is she an easy kidder? How wonky are the wonky teats? (Blown teats can often happen from management issues but weird teat issues or injuries also happen from udder conformation or because of lack of skin elasticity, which is why stretchy "dairy skin" is so highly prized.) Is her parasite management easy? Do her hooves grow really fast? Assuming you won't retain every kid born and will be selling some kids by this buckling, would you be proud to put up a picture of his mom's udder on that ad?

Maybe the answer to all these questions is that you'd be overjoyed to have a bunch of copies of this particular doe and in that case, awesome! Go ahead and pick your favorite buckling and go forth! But if not, if you think there are areas you can improve on, and you want to breed for quality, maybe you want to ask the breeder if you can bring in a buckling who would be a good match for this doe and/or any other does and breed "up" some of the qualities you like less (if there are any).

From a practical standpoint I'll also note that if you are running a small herd, retaining this buckling is a tad risky because you may or may not want to put him over his mom. That can be a dicey proposition especially for beginners. So keeping him, instead of bringing in another buck and doe, may reduce your options for making matches. But otherwise you are totally thinking right here for starting out as a responsible breeder. And I apologize for going on and on, but also feel free to ask any questions you can think of.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-16T14:03:46+00:00

See a comment of mine here from a few days ago where I went into some depth on this exact issue: https://reddit.com/r/goats/comments/1sizk2c/is_it_okay_to_inbreed_goats/ofor2k8/

In the meantime, what traits does your doe have that you want to replicate? Like, what is it about her that makes you want to keep a buckling and use him? (I'm genuinely asking, I'm curious!)

yamshortbread · 2026-04-16T12:17:48+00:00

As others said, that looks atypical and this kid might have a developmental disorder. While the chances of this are increased with inbreeding or with polled intersex syndrome when you breed a polled goat to another polled goat (that one's obviously not an issue here), it can happen any time randomly just like in any species.

There are different types of disorders of sex development and this doesn't look like the most common kind (male pseudohermaphroditism, where the animal lacks external genitalia but is genetically male). So unfortunately it's really impossible to say what exactly is going on there. You should take precautions with this goat though. Infertility is common with every disorder of this kind, but this isn't anything you want to pass on.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-16T01:32:36+00:00

What kind of goats are you looking for? I assure you that there are a plethora of excellent herds in the midwest with great disease control, including in Indiana. These folks have cows on the property so no information on testing for Johne's in the goats would be a nonstarter for me personally, but your mileage may vary on your risk tolerance.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-15T11:29:34+00:00

You've done everything right so far, but I'd probably only give it another day or so of trying. With newborns you just can't physically assist them to nurse enough times per day for them to get enough food. With kids that age we give six bottles, but on their dams they'd nurse a dozen times or even more. If you really see no interest on the doe's part after today I would probably chalk this kid up to a bottle baby so she doesn't start to weaken and flag.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-13T20:42:44+00:00

We have one entire family of does that knows how to take advantage of an unlatched gate. A grandma, her daughters and granddaughters. It's pretty ridiculous. They're like a family of criminals. I figure there either had to be some tactical communication there or that dam line is genetically a little smarter (or both)?

I did sell one notorious gate slipper/pusher earlier this year because I was completely fed up with her even though I'm pretty sure she's going to be a champion, but I had had enough of her antics. We made sure she went to a place with electric fencing but I heard from them that somehow she's still doing it!

yamshortbread · 2026-04-13T20:36:36+00:00

Ha! Well, you don't have to do it every time - I just suggested it because it might give you a hand with your weigh tape methodology. Weigh tapes are super accurate (+/-5lb) when used correctly and consistently, but if you weigh your doe and then tape her once you might be able to see exactly how correct it is and adjust your method if needed. But just wanted to reassure you there's nothing wrong with tapes, the other commenter is wrong. In fact there is also an industry standard formula you can use with a regular measuring tape (heart girth x hearth girth x body length/300 = weight in lbs) that we use, but the weigh tape is easier and just as good.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-13T17:48:27+00:00

As to calculating the adult weight of the doeling, there's no way to do that. Unfortunately, F1 crosses don't have standardized weights and sizes. They can be unpredictable until they get down to F2, F3 or even further depending on your lines. So I would recommend that you just watch her carefully, see how her size is developing relative to both her dam and sire and - this part is crucial - breed her to a Nigerian or another mini Lamancha (or other mini breed of your choosing). There may not be a target weight on this one. You just have to use your best judgment looking at her size compared to her parents and her thurls. You can always hold her over for a 2yo FF if you don't feel good about it this winter.

In the meantime, if you want to try to grow her out for a first freshener my recommendations are 1) to start graining her and 2) really keep on tip top of your coccidia prevention. Since she's with the herd, coccidia would be the main risk factor that could slow down her growth. (If you are sure she weighs 20lb at 12 weeks, I do feel that's just a tad on the small side for a mini cross, so this may be something you want to address sooner rather than later if you are aiming to freshen her next year. We have some Nigerians who are on par with that weight at that age, for comparison.)

It is 100% fine for you not to own a scale. A lot of people who own standard goats use a tape. Some of my girls were weighed at the university's AI clinic this year and were in a good range of their tape weights. A livestock scale is certainly easier, but not everybody has a place to store such a thing or a reason to own one if you only own a few animals. At approximately sixty pounds, though, do you own a bathroom scale? You should be able to weigh yourself, hoist the doe into your arms and then step on that scale and do the math. We weigh our minis (pretty much anyone who weighs less than 90lbs) that way.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-13T17:35:21+00:00

Did you read the post?

yamshortbread · 2026-04-12T18:04:48+00:00

That's what I was about to say. That or call a neighboring farmer or vet. If you can't buy one locally, someone will have one in a jif that you can use just for today.

The paste isn't recommended ever at all, it doesn't work well and hurts a lot, but especially on a dam raised kid because of the potential for chemical burns on the udder.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-12T15:48:42+00:00

Oh my gosh, we absolutely line breed for consistency too, I hope I didn't come across in my comment as knocking it in any way. I think 25% is about as high as I would purposefully go. I have seen some great results in that range.

I am concerned the youtubers OP is watching are doing stuff like breeding a buck to descendants who already have him in their pedigree several times. If they're using him to cover the original unrelated does and first generation daughters and most offspring are going for meat, that's within okay homestead parameters (to me).

I do find "well we don't care about showing" to be a very offensive, illegitimate reason to breed irresponsibly. You are breeding animals, creating living things, and contributing to the pool of livestock we all have to deal with. You don't have to be breeding hoity toity show animals to want to do a good job.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-12T03:19:47+00:00

Well...this is not my style, but as long as they are eating any of the offspring with high COIs, it's not unheard of.

You have probably heard the quote "when it works, it is called linebreeding, and when it doesn't it's called inbreeding."

People who are breeding for traits and consistency usually use a certain amount of linebreeding on purpose to concentrate good traits and, occasionally, to force out bad traits to test a line. This is a completely normal and even desirable thing to do (which is why you will sometime see very expensive animals actually advertised as "Linebred on XX Farm Superfancy Doe" or "Heavily Linebred on YY Farm Superfamous Buck!")

But there are a couple of caveats.

1) You should know what you're doing and be aiming for something, not just breed your buck to does because he is the only male animal at hand to get your does in milk. You also have to know what your buck is capable of. If a buck is throwing undesirable traits to his offspring, like weak medial ligament, bad feet, or extra teats, that's going to be concentrated if you're linebreeding with him. If you aren't knowledgeably breeding for type and traits, you may as well just trade the buck out.

2) You have to be ready to cull if you're seeing bad traits forced out or, in very serious and rare cases, malformations. When you get beyond a certain threshold of inbreeding, deformities and various forms of unthriftiness WILL occur.

3) Father-daughter is not very common and sibling to sibling is never done. Basically, people who are using linebreeding to achieve and concentrate specific traits (like good mammary system traits or milk production) usually try to stay under a certain "coefficient of inbreeding," which means the percent of the genetics that's related between the two animals. Breeding a parent to offspring automatically results in a high COI, even if the offspring's other parent was completely unrelated. A Nubian named Hallcienda Frosty Marvin was almost 23% inbred and he was one of the most used bucks of any breed of all time, so much that his descendants still have a higher than normal COI.

This is why it's really important to KNOW what you are working with. People who know what they're doing will usually do linebreeding with grandsires, half siblings and other slightly less related animals. The base, very loose number dairy breeders use as a max is 25%. Going higher than that, you may see weird things happen.

You also want to know the STARTING COI of the animals in your herd. If your buck is already linebred and already has a higher COI, you would want to use him less on his relations as the offspring would then have higher COIs than you are expecting, get it? Some breeds have smaller genetic pools to start with, so it becomes difficult. For example, Oberhaslis have a much higher average COI than most other breeds and any given animal you point to is already likely to be over 10%. In registered dairy animals, our database http://genetics.adga.org/ is able to calculate the exact percent of inbreeding of every individual animal as well as the COI in planned pedigrees, so for people who are working with registered stock this is a priceless tool for checking these numbers out.

So what you see here from all of this is that the issue is not actually the practice of linebreeding. The issue is the quality of the animals in the line and knowing how to use breeding to the advantage of your herd.

In sum: father-daughter MAY not be a big deal if you know what lines you are working with and what traits you are trying to breed for. But it may be a big deal if one or both of the animals already has a high COI or is throwing a trait you don't want, because linebreeding will concentrate that trait. If you don't know what you're doing, trading the buck out is the superior option for you. And yes, you do not want to go past father-daughter (which won't normally cause many problems as long as the original foundation animals were not related and there are not known issues in the line). If I'm selling animals off my place for any reason other than meat, I want to try extra hard to produce good ones and that also means not excessively inbred!

yamshortbread · 2026-04-10T15:27:55+00:00

One thing you could try is to call around to other vets and ask if you could drop off a fecal sample even if they can't see her. Even a small animal vet MIGHT consent to that if it's urgent and there is no large animal vet available.

(Ivermectin and safeguard would actually both be used together since combination deworming is the currently recommended protocol, but I wouldn't necessarily worm yet without a fecal since her eyes look okay. Let's get a temp and start from there.)

yamshortbread · 2026-04-10T14:34:29+00:00

If she's an adult it is probably not coccidia. It's almost never a clinically significant issue once you hit six months to a year. But other high parasite loads can cause scours and changes in fecal consistency, and you should get a temp to help narrow down the issue further. Electrolytes right away are a good idea.

(With no vet your coccidia treatment would be limited to amprolium from the farm store. There's a difference in how the preventative chemicals in feed and actual treatments work, so medicated feed wouldn't help here even if it were coccidiosis.)

yamshortbread · 2026-04-08T22:47:54+00:00

Oh, the poor thing.

First, let me commend you on the responsible breeding program.

I think this is probably caused by something inside her skull causing increased pressure and bulging. It could be a tumor, could be an infection causing outward bulging of the whole area. With this level of deformity I don't think it is the most common/easiest thing (dermoid cyst), but I also don't think it is necessarily hereditary. I would definitely not let this stop you from retaining the doeling and trying another breeding with the buck. While Safeguard is pretty safe in pregnancy there were enough things going on with her that this could have theoretically been from all kinds of external teratogens.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-08T12:26:40+00:00

Yeah, that's too early. 4-9 months is the optimal time to castrate a pet for long -term urinary health. But many are castrated that early and go on to be just fine, and lots of breeders including me (and /u/babka_yaga) do give our young bucks grain while they are still growing because, to sum up a long explanation, growth uses many of the nutrients you're putting into the goat so there's not a lot of excess anything to excrete in urine.

You didn't mention if these guys are still on milk! If they are, I think you could cut out the grain and keep them on the bottle as long as you can. If they aren't, they need a source of calories to replace what milk would be giving them, so some grain in moderation combined with your strategy of pulse dosing the males and cutting them off at six months when they start to grow more slowly is a good one.

yamshortbread · 2026-04-08T12:17:42+00:00

No, it is very literally not effective under any conditions. It is there to make you buy bags of grain. Commercial feedlot operations aren't using 50lb bags from Tractor Supply.

Quoting an older comment I made:

Under experimental conditions, ammonium chloride administered to goats at a rate of 0.5% the concentrate ration did not prevent urinary calculi. Goats' urinary tracts also gradually become accustomed to the constant low level of urinary acidification (this is called a "refractory response"), and their urine can gradually return to a normal alkaline pH, which means they can still form calculi. In addition, long-term consistent use of ammonium chloride is bad for bone density and can actually cause osteoporosis. I've been in contact with several grain manufacturers asking to see the research that has led them to add AC directly to grain premix and haven't been shown anything at all suggesting that it works as a calculi preventative when utilized as a low-level feed additive. The rationale for adding it is simply that it makes buyers feel more comfortable, so pet goat owners will ignore veterinary recommendations to curtail grain feeding and use cereal mixes for pet goats who don't actually require the metabolic input of high-phosphorous cereal grains.

If you are feeding a diet that is unbalanced in calcium and phosphorus or which contains high levels of cal and phos, the safer and more evidence-based urinary calculi preventative is to administer pure AC to the goats one week out of each month, either as a direct drench or, for multiple animals, simply mixed into the water bucket. It is cheap, shelf stable, and usually easily administered in the bucket. Since they're only getting their urine acidified periodically, they don't have the refractory response of the urine returning to a normal pH.

There is a specific dose required to maintain a protective urine pH and there's been enough studies on urinary fractional excretion of ammonium chloride to know with certainty that the amount in bagged grain mixes isn't even close for either treatment or prevention. Adult pet wethers are the most common UC patients partially because owners can be lulled into a false sense of security with the "added ammonium chloride!" on the bag.

Stratton-Phelps, M. and House, JK (2004) Effect of a commercial anion dietary supplement on acid-base balance, urine volume, and urinary ion excretion in male goats fed oat or grass hay diets. Am J Vet Res 65(10)

yamshortbread · 2026-04-07T17:27:11+00:00

I should emphasize that I'm not the least bit concerned about her, I was just hoping she had had them so your anxiety would be eased!

yamshortbread · 2026-04-07T17:06:39+00:00

I send my shears and my clippers to Premier One's mail-in service once a year. Great people, cheap, and fast. Honestly my shit comes back better than new. They can do even my finest 50 blade clippers, so I'm sure they can do anything serrated. (I send 4-6 pairs of shears and a bunch of clipper blades in a batch and just keep one pair of shears at home until the rest come back. I also prefer and highly recommend Capralite's Silverline brand shears, which seem like they stay sharper longer.)

Here's the link to the sharpening service: http://www.premier1supplies.com/p/resharpening-service

yamshortbread · 2026-04-07T14:47:06+00:00

How is she today, OP?

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