 2021 Snow Stockdale Texas As cold weather approaches, it is important to consider the comfort of the goats we care for. This post may contain affiliate links but at NO extra costs to you. For further details, please read my full disclosure policy. When livestock gives birth, cows calve, sheep lamb, and goats kid. Because calves are so big and lambs are born with a wool coat, winter birthing doesn’t cause anywhere near the issues that it does for goats, which are smaller and have less insulation. The smaller the goats and the lower the temperature, the more you need to keep an eye on goats that are close to giving birth. Preparing for goats giving birth in cold temperatures One of the most important things we use is a baby monitor or outdoor camera. We bought ours from Amazon the Wyze Cam Pan 1080. It connects to our cell phones and we can watch the goats. Nothing in this article will help your baby goats if you are not there when the mama gives birth, and it’s easy to miss a birth if you don’t have a monitor. You also need to have plenty of large bath towels — at least one for every kid you are expecting, plus one or two extras just in case you get a surprise. If temperatures are going to be below freezing, you also need a heat lamp, and the colder it is, the more it is necessary to also have a blow dryer and a heating pad. The heating pad keeps me warm and the kids warm too. I put the heating pad on my lap, and put the kids on it while blow drying them. It helps me stay warmer, and it warms up the bottom half of the kid while I’m blow drying the top half. when goats give birth in winterYou need to get kids dried off as quickly as possible when temperatures are cold and freezing because of the risk of hypothermia. And if it’s windy, and the goat is outside, a kid can also get hypothermia at fairly cool temperatures. One time we had purchased some goats already bred, and almost lost the kids to hypothermia when one of the does gave birth unexpectedly in the pasture. Although temperatures were in the 40s, it was very windy, and the doe had triplets. I was able to get the doe and triples in the barn under heat lamps to warm them up. When a doe has that many kids, she doesn't have time to clean each kid to keep them from getting chilled before she has another one. So, in some cases you need to be there not because a doe might have problems but because she gives birth too easily and too quickly. This is where the towels come in so you can help the doe clean the kids and keep them warm with the towels. We live in south Texas and normally we don't get snow. This year February 2021 it snowed for two days and we had freezing temperatures for over a week. We have heat lamps in the barn and blankets for all the kids. Our goats were not use to this extreme weather. Neither were we. We worked very hard that week to keep all our kids and does warm. I take my hat off to all of you who live were it snows for days on end. We have dog houses that the kids get in. They curl up next to each other and stay nice and warm. Normally we have a heat lamp hanging so it can shine into the door way of the dog house where the heat can build up a little bit and make it warmer than the outside. Once the kids are dry, they don’t seem to be bothered by cold weather much. However, this can vary depending upon the kid’s size. In cooler weather we put blankets on the babies. Keep in mind that heat lamps are the number one cause of barn fires, and if you use one, use a quality style not a Chicken Lamp and make sure there is no way that a curious goat can knock it down. If the heat lamp ends up in the bedding, it can easily cause a fire. The coat pictured can easily be made from the sleeve of an old sweatshirt. The wristband of the sweatshirt becomes the neck band for the kid. Cut two small holes for the kid’s front feet, and you’re good to go! Remember, if the kid is a buck, you need to be sure the coat doesn’t go under his belly far enough for him to be able to pee on it. We only use jackets to help warm the kid up. Some may just need a few hours to figure out how to regulate their body temperature. When we use a jacket on a kid we make sure to remove the jacket when it warms up outside. Getting started with nursing This is always important, and I don’t leave the barn until I’ve seen all of the kids find the teat and nurse without assistance. When it’s cold out, however, it is even more important! When kids get chilled, the first thing to go is their sucking instinct. A lot of people are quick to assume that a kid has a selenium deficiency if it can’t figure out how to nurse, but if temperatures are below freezing, the kid could simply have hypothermia. Once the kid is warmed up, it will nurse. If a kid has hypothermia its digestive system will shut down. It won’t digest anything if its body temperature is less than around 100, so tube feeding is not the answer. The quickest way to know if a kid has hypothermia is to put your finger in its mouth. It should feel warm. If it’s cool, the kid’s body temperature is below normal. If it feels like ice water, you need to work quickly to get the kid warmed up. My go to mentor told me to put a kid on a heating pad while moving a blow dryer across the top of its body. The colder the air is, the closer the blow dryer has to be to the kids body. When it’s below zero, it can’t be more than a couple of inches from the kid or the air will be cold. I always have my hand moving across the kid’s body while the blow dryer is on, so I know how warm it is — or not. You can also place the Kid in a large plastic bag with the head out of course, and put it is a tub or sink of warm water to help warm it up. Do NOT wrap a kid in a heating pad because you could overheat it — especially if you walk away for a little while. I’ve never heard of anyone making this mistake more than once. If the kid gets overheated it can have a seizure, which can kill it. As you are trying to warm up the kid, put your finger in its mouth every 10 to 15 minutes. It should start to feel warmer, of course. But you know things have really improved when the kid starts to suck on your finger. Once the kid’s mouth is warm and it sucks on your finger, you can stick it under the doe’s udder to see if it will nurse. I usually give it a minute or so, and if it hasn’t found the teat, I’ll open its mouth and put the teat in it, then close the mouth and hold the kid there. You may also squirt a little milk in the kid’s mouth before closing it. Some will start to suckle right away. If the kid doesn’t start nursing after about 10 minutes of working with it, I’ll milk the mother and give the kid colostrum in a bottle. I use a regular baby bottle. For more on this process, check out my post on How to Bottle Feed A Baby Goat, which includes a video.  Sometimes kids just need the colostrum — called liquid gold by some — to get them jump started. I prefer a regular baby bottle because you can squeeze the bottle and drip the milk into the kids mouth. Especially if this is a late night kidding, I am not going to leave the barn until I know the kid has 5 to 10 percent of its body weight in colostrum in its belly. If the kid is finding the teat and nursing on its own, I know this will continue to happen overnight. But if I have to give it a bottle, I want to be sure it has that colostrum before I go to bed. Why kid in winter?After reading all of this, you’re probably wondering why anyone would choose to kid in winter. There are a few reasons people chose to kid in winter, it may be to have kids at the right age for Livestock shows in their region, it may be so they can sell at a certain time frame. Then there are sometimes when the breeding time get chosen for you due to accidental breeding. Somehow a buck managed to find a doe in heat, and now you’re expecting babies. We have chosen to kid in the winter here in South Texas for many years now. It is one of the strategies we used to overcome a problem with the heat. The heat here in South Texas can draw the does down, and also put a strain on kids during the weaning process. Your can read our post on Breeding Season to learn more on this subject. Winter Goat Care TipsHere’s a quick summary of basic winter goat care:
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Margarita & Stace
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