Tag: Alpine

Lessons from Goat Kidding: Triumphs and Tragedies

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment
Glimmer

I am going to be honest with you, I tend to run a little on the pessimistic side. With our first kidding season on the farm coming up I just figured something would go wrong. I did not think it would go this wrong.

Back in late October and early November, we bred three of our goats. Two of our Nigerian Dwarfs and our one Alpine. The Alpine has kidded before, but it was a first for both the Nigerians. They were however almost two years old, so being too young was not a factor in this incident. I watched every video, talked to my vet friend, and did all the research. I felt like I was as prepared as you can be for your first kidding.

The First One

Our first goat to go into labor was Val. I had been watching her for days and the morning of her delivery she was very typical of a goat in labor. She was super loud, followed me everywhere, and you could just tell she was uncomfortable. It was a terribly windy day so I went ahead and put her in the kidding stall early and I sat with her all day. It was a very long day. Around 8pm she finally went into active labor. Again, typical of all the things I had read. She was up and down, pawing the ground, and started a few small pushes. Everything I read says once they are pushing it should not take more than 30 minutes before you go in and help. She took an hour. However, it was not super consistent in the beginning and she didn’t look in distress so I let her go. Once she started pushing hard, the baby was out in no time. For her delivery, she pushed and a water sack presented and then popped. She pushed some more and another water sack presented but this one had the baby in it. As soon as she had kidded another sack presented which ended up being the placenta. All very textbook and easy. I did feel her stomach after since she only had one baby and we were expecting more (she was huge), I thought I felt something but she passed the placenta, and all the research I had done said that was the end of labor, there were no more kids. In this case, they were right. She was done and her baby was HUGE! She safely delivered one good-sized doeling and has raised her for the last few weeks very successfully. She is a great mom!

Astrid

Tragedy, The Second Birth

Two weeks after Val delivered, our second Nigerian (Glimmer) went into labor. This labor however was anything but typical. To start with she delivered on a Sunday, but the Thursday before I could have sworn she was in labor. She looked so uncomfortable all day, pawed the ground, and was restless and a little loud. I put her in the kidding stall but she never really made any progress. She never pushed, she never had any discharge, and the next morning she went about her business as usual. She was fine all day Saturday as well. She ate, drank, hung out with the other goats, and had no labor signs whatsoever. Sunday she went into labor for real. When it came time for active labor this is when things got a little weird. She pushed and one water sack presented and popped. Then she pushed and another water sack presented and popped. Finally, a third water sack presented and a baby was delivered. She was TINY. Like Val, shortly after the placenta came. However, it didn’t look like Val’s. It was small and it never fully delivered. Glimmer however seemed fine. She got up, nursed her baby, drank her molasses water, and ate some food. It was late at night and everything said the placenta could take up to 18 hours to deliver so I went to bed and checked on her in the morning. The placenta was still hanging and she looked a little down. She was laying down and not really wanting to get up, she ate but not much, and she wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the baby. I could still get her up and the placenta was fully out but was still attached by a tiny bit. She was doing ok, but over the next few hours I noticed her straining and pushing. So, I reached out to my friend, a vet, and she and her husband came over.

I will backtrack and say I sent her a video of the goat and she thought either retained placenta or more babies.

When she got to our house and examined Glimmer she found that she did indeed have more babies. Two that had passed already were stuck inside. My friend did everything she could to get the babies out but Glimmer was apparently narrow in the pelvic canal and the baby in the canal was breech. She couldn’t free her and on top of that she found a uterine tear. We decided at this point that she was suffering, there was no recovery, and she was put down.

Glimmer and Baby

Dealing with Death

I was ready for complications but this one shook me. I thought the worst I would have to deal with was maybe having to reposition a baby. Now, I feel so much guilt and I wonder what else I could have done. My vet friend said there was nothing I could have done to save her. The breech baby was stuck and even she couldn’t free it. I still wonder if I had done something Thursday if things would have been different. However, there were really no signs that she was in active labor or distress. If she was I don’t know how we got one live baby in the end. Or how we got one baby and a placenta past the other two. So, in the end, we lost our doe and gained her doeling. Her little one was named Ember, as in her mom’s last little ember, and she is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. She is taking the bottle and doing just fine. I am still struggling with Glimmer’s death and how it happened. Everything I have ever read says if you have livestock you will have deadstock, but even so, it’s hard. It feels like I failed. I was supposed to keep her safe and I didn’t. That’s a tough pill to swallow

Baby Ember

The Last Delivery

I mentioned earlier we bred three goats. Our Alpine is the last to go, and for awhile I thought she wasn’t pregnant. The Nigerians developed their udders a while ago. It was obvious they were pregnant, but the Alpine still doesn’t have one. For about the last month, I have made peace with the fact that her breeding didn’t take. She is the one goat I was really looking forward to, as she was bred to a Nigerian Buck and will have a mini Alpine baby, but I thought it wasn’t meant to be this go round. A few days after Glimmer passed, I was in the pasture and noticed Lee (Alpine) had a few pregnancy signs after all. She is a skinny goat so it was hard to tell. Now, it feels a little bit like a second chance. A light after the dark. She is definitely pregnant and due in about a week. I’m nervous, but she has kidded before and should be fine. I can’t wait to see what she has and I pray that it goes smoothly. This will be the end of our kidding season and I would really like for it to end in celebration. If she gives us a doeling I will be over the moon.

Lee

Baby Goats

Little Ember is doing great. I however am a bit sleep-deprived. She is so tiny, so I make sure to get up every night at 2am and give her a bottle. She spends most of her day in the pasture with the big goats and sleeps with our other baby (Astrid) at night in the shed. They both love to run around the pasture and do the biggest little jumps you have ever seen. If nothing else, baby goats are super entertaining. It is a joy to watch them play together. It doesn’t fix everything but having them makes it a little better.

Ember

Final Thoughts

I keep replaying this in my mind and trying to learn from what went wrong. I asked online, Goat Forum, about the water sacks and everyone seemed to think it was normal, but i thought it was strange. As it turned out, it was multiple kids. I trusted a little too much in research and online help than what my gut told me. I still don’t think though even if I had gone in, the results would have been any different. If a vet can’t reposition the baby I doubt I could have. I also doubted myself when I thought I felt more babies since the placenta was passed. I think the take away is that I know my goats. I am with them every day and I should have trusted myself a little bit more. The end result would have still probably been the same, but I would have at least felt a little better about my part. I do still think I did what I could for the most part. I got a vet involved as soon as I thought it was needed and unfortunately it wasn’t enough. So, if you have goats and plan to breed them just be prepared. It can be one of the most amazing things you’ve ever done, watching a brand new baby be born is awesome, but it can also go wrong. As a livestock owner I try and do everything I can to take care of the animals I own, but things still go wrong. I will learn from this and use this knowledge from here on out. Let’s pray none of us ever face this again.

Two weeks apart. Look at the size difference

If you have any advice to share or kidding stories feel free to leave them in the comments. Maybe we can all learn and grow in knowledge together.

2024 Fall Breeding Plans

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of year. Breeding season is upon us. In our goat herd, we have four Nigerian Dwarf does and one Alpine doe. Two of the Nigerian Dwarfs and the Alpine are currently in milk and not on the docket for breeding this fall. That leaves my two other Nigerian Dwarf girls to be bred for the first time.

Since we live in a colder climate I decided to wait until October to breed the girls. February can be quite brutal here and I did not want to try and keep kids alive in the extreme cold. Goat pregnancies are around 150 days, which should put us delivering in March if they conceive in October.

We have actually, already attempted breeding with our fall girls as of this post. In fact, yesterday we were able to breed the goat who I thought would never come into heat. She showed tons of signs but wasn’t interested. She still ran around a bit yesterday but I do believe our buck was able to get his job done. Both of these does have never been bred before, and our buck is about six months old and a new breeder as well, so I will not be shocked if this first time doesn’t take.

Now, we simply watch and wait. If they go back into heat we will know they weren’t successfully bred and will try again. In the meantime, I am drying off the other two Nigerian Dwarfs and will be keeping the Alpine in milk. As mentioned earlier we live in a very cold climate, and on the prairie, so it gets pretty miserable out here. I decided to dry off the other two does since they give less milk and I would have to keep two of them in milk to produce what the Alpine does alone. We will keep the Alpine in milk throughout the winter since she produces enough for our family and is really quick to milk. When temps are in the negative and the wind is blowing I want to be outside for as little time as possible.

Those are our fall breeding plans. I am not sure yet what we will do for the rest of the upcoming year. If the two bred now kid in March then they should be able to stay in milk until we hit winter next year. I am not sure how long our Alpine will stay in milk, I have read they can stay in milk for years sometimes. However, I think I may breed her sometime in the spring and have her kid next fall so we can milk her through the winter again. As long as that provides our family with enough milk then that might end up being our breeding schedule from here on out. That would actually give each goat a pretty good chunk of time off between kiddings.

I think our biggest challenge is going to be not keeping every baby born here on the farm. My kids get attached to everything!

Dairy Goats: Alpine vs Nigerian Dwarf

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Beginner Herd

We added goats to our farm about two months ago. The first additions were a small starter herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats, which included two does already in milk, two yearling does not in milk, a month-old buckling, and a month-old wether. When we first brought them home we also brought home five gallons of frozen milk so we could try our own goat milk without worrying about feeding the bottle babies. Right away we fell in love with the fresh milk. Nigerian Dwarf milk is very creamy and not really goaty. There can sometimes be a slight aftertaste, but for the most part, it has no flavor at all. Once you have fresh milk it’s really hard to go back to anything else.

We Need Another

Out of our two milking Nigerians, we get almost exactly four cups of milk every milking. Four cups of milk per milking (twice daily) adds up to a half gallon of milk each day. Originally this was plenty of milk for our family. However, when you want to start making yogurt or other things with goat milk you end up needing a little bit more. My son alone drinks almost a quart a day. Then we ran out of frozen milk and had to start feeding our babies our fresh milk. Obviously, they need the milk and we gave it to them, but when you just got your own dairy goats it’s a bit frustrating to give every ounce back to the babies. Between the two babies, they drink a half gallon a day, so everything we got was theirs.

Originally I was looking into adding another Nigerian Dwarf to help solve this problem but she would only give us a quart of milk a day on her own. I really didn’t want to add multiple goats and have to milk four or five, twice a day. When I reached out to the lady we got our goats from she ended up not having another Nigerian anyway, but her mom had an Alpine. Her mom has been raising Alpines for about 30 years and has really nice stock. She asked if we would consider one since she would give us a lot more milk, and I agreed.

Butterfat and Volume

If you look into the different goat breeds you will find that Nigerian Dwarfs give the most butterfat in their milk. This is what makes their milk creamy. Alpines are on the lower end of the butterfat content, but they are a larger goat and therefore give a lot more volume. I think most people who want larger dairy goats tend to go with Nubians or LaManchas, but I was having a hard time finding quality goats, already in milk, within a reasonable distance from me. For those reasons, I went ahead and decided to purchase the Alpine and bring her home.

It took a few days for her to settle in, but now that she’s been here for almost a month we love her. She is one of the sweetest goats we have and she is so easy to handle. She is also giving us five cups of milk per milking, which is over a half gallon of milk a day. Currently, most of her milk is going to our bottle babies. This has been the big advantage of bringing her home. She produces enough milk on her own to feed both bottle babies and have some leftover. This allows us to keep all the Nigerian milk for drinking or for making yogurt and cheese. We have plenty of milk now! Between the three goats, we get a little over a gallon of milk a day. The bottle babies are coming up on three months old and will be weaned soonish. I’ve heard you wean them between two and three months old, but some also say to wait until they are eating solid food well. Ours are eating hay but I don’t think they are eating enough yet to be fully weaned. Once they are weaned we are going to be overflowing with goat milk.

Alpine Milk

As I mentioned Alpines have a lower butterfat content than Nigerians. On top of that Alpine milk does carry a bit of the goat flavor, and I am not sure why that is. I don’t know if it’s because they are larger goats, or if it has to do with the fat content, but it is definitely a goatier-flavored milk. It is still not bad and we don’t mind it but it is something to keep in mind when picking out a dairy goat.

Our Alpine is only a year old and on her first freshening. She is currently at around 10 cups of milk a day and I assume she will only give more as time goes on and she gets older and freshens again. When you research Alpine goat production it says they can produce 1-2 gallons a day. There was an Alpine at the place we got ours from that was the biggest goat I have ever seen. She was massive and her udder was huge. I would assume she’s closer to the two gallon a day mark. If you are looking for volume, I would think an Alpine would be a good consideration.

Another benefit that I have read is you can keep an Alpine in milk longer than you can a Nigerian. I have seen many posts saying you can keep an Alpine in milk for a few years even, while Nigerians tend to dry themselves off by ten months. So, if you don’t want to breed every year an Alpine might be what you need to look for. They do take up more room being a larger goat, but they are pretty easy to handle. At least our girl is easy to handle. She is also easier to keep fenced in. Yes, she requires more space, but she doesn’t try and squeeze under the fence like the Nigerians do. I have been surprised by how small a hole the Nigerians can manage to squeeze through. We have had quite a few escapes but the Alpine has never been the culprit.

Yogurt, Cheese, and More

There are many uses for goat milk. Basically any dairy product can be made from goat milk just like cow milk, with maybe a few adaptations.

  • Our first use for goat milk is fresh drinking. My son uses it in his cereal, we put it in our tea and coffee, and we drink it from the glass. It was an easy transition for our family to switch over completely. I was worried that they wouldn’t like it, but I think having the Nigerians first really helped with the transition to only goat milk.
  • My next favorite way to use the milk is homemade yogurt. I had never made yogurt before and it was much easier than I expected. I make it and strain it so that it is closer to a Greek yogurt and it’s fantastic. My husband has even brought some to a friend and he loved it. He has asked for more and downs it as soon as he gets it. You can make homemade yogurt with store-bought milk and if it’s anything like the yogurt we made I would highly recommend trying it.
  • The third would be a simple quick cheese. I’ve seen people call it a farmer’s cheese, or a Chevre cheese. You need an acid, (vinegar or lemon juice) and milk. It’s a pretty quick and easy process. You end up with a cheese similar in consistency to a feta. You can flavor it however you want and it’s great to add to salads or even eggs for breakfast. I would like to try and make more of a mozzarella cheese, I think this would be a bigger hit with the whole family, as the kids don’t care too much for the simple cheese.
  • Lastly, I made Cajeta. It’s a Mexican caramel typically made from goat milk. It was so good, but very very sweet. It also has a cinnamon stick added to the boiling process and I don’t know if I would add that next time. My daughter did say it reminded her of Christmas and I have to agree, there was something about it that was very much reminiscent of Christmas-time flavors. If I make it again I will not cook it as long. It turned out pretty thick and while great, was a little hard to use. I think I would like a more pourable consistency to put on ice cream.

So far I have not been able to make butter or even just heavy cream. Goat milk is naturally homogenized, meaning the fat doesn’t separate the same way cow’s milk does. From what I have read it will separate if you let it sit long enough, but the flavor of the milk will also change if it sits so I haven’t tried. For goat’s milk, it is most recommended that you buy a milk separator. I would love to have one someday, but they can be pricey so we will have to wait a little while to work that into the budget. Once we add that to our gadgets I hope to make butter, ice cream, sour cream, and heavy cream. For now, most of our excess milk is being made into yogurt.

How to Handle Goat Milk

The goaty flavor is what we are all trying to avoid in our milk. While a little goaty flavor can’t be helped sometimes the way you handle fresh milk can really make a difference. First and foremost everything has to be clean. From what you are milking into, to the goat itself, it’s very important that you make sure everything is really clean. You should avoid plastic whenever you can as it can hold onto flavors and leech those into your milk. I like to use stainless steel or we have a big glass batter bowl that I milk into, and then I store all our milk in glass half gallon or quart size mason jars. Next, you want to strain and get your milk cold as quickly as possible. The faster you get it cold, the longer the milk will keep fresh. I like to bring my milk in as soon as I’m done milking, strain it, and then I stick it in the freezer for about an hour or so. Be careful because I often forget the milk in the freezer and end up freezing it.

Milk will stay fresh in the fridge for a couple of days. After a few days the milk is still good, but the flavor will start to change. Fresh milk doesn’t go bad the same way store bought milk does, but the flavor changes quite a bit as it sits. I like to use our milk for fresh drinking within about two days, and then if I have any leftover I will turn that into yogurt. Everything is better when it’s made with fresh milk, but don’t be afraid to make yogurt or cheese with the older milk.

Finally, keep an eye on your goats and make sure they are healthy. You don’t want to use milk from a goat that is sick in any way. When our Alpine first got here she was stressed and had runny poop so we didn’t keep her milk. Once she settled in and returned to normal, her milk was fine to use.

If during milking the milk gets dirty for any reason consider tossing it. Straining the milk is essential because goat hairs and some dust will fall in the milk while you are milking, but anything else really shouldn’t be kept. It was pretty muddy here recently and somehow we kept getting dirt in the milk during milking. I gave that to the bottle babies or the chickens. If you drink your milk raw it’s best to err on the side of caution.

If drinking your milk raw scares you go ahead and pasteurize it. I may get a lot of grief for saying this but I think pasteurized milk is fine. There is a chance that heating the milk up might bring a bit of the goat flavor out, but sometimes it’s better safe than sorry. From what I have researched pasteurization doesn’t kill as much of the nutrients and benefits as we are led to believe. I personally think even pasteurized, your own fresh milk is better than anything you can buy. We all have to do what we are comfortable with and not what social media platforms are telling us.

For our family, I make sure to keep everything very clean, and we use our milk raw. However, if I think for any reason the milk has been contaminated we don’t drink it. If it’s not bad I will turn it into cheese or yogurt as you cook both of those, or it goes to the babies since they would drink straight from the udder anyway. Chickens will also help you dispose of your unwanted milk, or even yogurt that didn’t quite work out. So far, we have all drank our raw milk and been completely fine.

Who Wins? Alpine or ND

Both! That didn’t really answer anything, but we love all our girls. Each breed brings something the other doesn’t have and therefore I like having them both. Taste wise, the Nigerians win hands down, but the Alpine is still a good choice and you get so much more per goat. Maybe a mixed herd is the best option.

For future breeding plans I plan on trying out the mini Alpines. Mini goats are simply a large goat bred to a Nigerian Dwarf Buck. You don’t want to breed the other way around because it could cause issues for the doe to have a larger kid than she should but a smaller buck to a larger doe works just fine. I am curious to see if the Nigerian Buck brings any more fat content to the Alpine milk. A mini Alpine will still produce more milk than the Nigerian Dwarf, so I am really hoping it is the best of both breeds. I can’t find a ton of information on the internet about Mini Alpines so I guess we will wait and see. Our buck is still too young to breed and I am in no hurry. Once we find out I will let you all know. Until then research your goat breeds, make a choice, and jump. I do not regret our goats for one second. They have been such an awesome addition to our home and the fresh milk is everything I dreamed it would be.