Leslie Lupine Kids

On Thursday afternoon, March 4th, I found that Ms. Leslie Lupine, our final large dairy doe to kid, had kidded. At first I thought she had a singleton buckling, a handsome black fellow with white ears and a white spot on the top of his head; however, when I was working with a cattle panel stall divider in that stall, a little bleat emitted from a dark corner alerted me to a second buckling. The second kid was the same pretty brown as his dam. Although the firstborn was up and about when I heard his voice, this second born was lying flat, having wedged himself into a dark, inconspicuous, and very chilly corner.

He was too weak to nurse, so I tucked the little fellow in under my sweatshirt and trotted him to the house. Once inside, I got busy. A towel placed in the bathroom sink provided the shivering kid a place to wait for me. A quick call to the Wilson Farmers Co-op answered my persistently unanswered question of "Which side of a goat's throat leads to the stomach and which to the lungs?" and gained suggestions for raising the kid's body core temperature quickly. A stop at the veterinary section of the house revealed a lamb feeding kit--a 2 ounce (60 ml) syringe and a flexible tube with a rounded leading end. A look into the freezer revealed an ice cube tray filled with frozen cubes of colostrum from Marcie's recent kidding. With colostrum cubes melted and heated to 102 degrees, the gastric tube tipped with olive oil to help it slide, and the syringe loaded to capacity, I returned to the little buckling.

We set up shop on the floor in front of a portable ceramic heater turned up high. I wedged the little guy between my knees, aimed the gastric tube into him through the opening on right side of his throat, then slowly filled him to capacity. He tolerated the intrusion quite well, and I left him basking before the heater while I headed back to the barn to coax some colostrum from Leslie Lupine for her at-risk buckling. She was cooperative.

Indeed, I'm surprised by how much formerly-skittish goats will tolerate from me in the first several hours of their entry into new motherhood. Miss Leslie not only allowed me to milk her (a first for this first-freshener), but she hardly objected when I inspected her buckling, cut his umbilical cord and dipped it in iodine, then set about moving them to an isolated spot with a heating lamp.

Her firstborn stood sleepily in front of the reflective Tekfoil insulation by his heating lamp, allowing me to snap this photo of his velvety softness. She had delivered a fine little specimen, one I hoped would have his twin back beside him shortly.

Inside, the brown buckling suffered another 2 ounces of colostrum delivered directly into his stomach. Then after napping long enough to regain his strength, he stood to suckle eagerly on the rubber-nippled bottle I had prepared for him. Satisfied with his recovery, I took him back out to the barn and returned him to his waiting momma before sundown.

With nighttime temperatures in the mid-20's, I thought to check on the kids a bit after midnight. They were warm enough, it seemed, but the brown buckling wouldn't nurse when I asked him to, and began shivering uncontrollably soon after I'd pulled him out for a feeding. With apologies to Leslie Lupine, momma extraordinaire, I trudged her tyke back to the house. He refused a bottle and seemed chilled to the bone, so I intubated him once more--two ounces fresh milk--set him in a box surrounded with hot-water-filled containers, and placed him beneath the bathroom heater so that I could grab a few winks. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. and we had plans for a long drive that day; I caught about two hours of sleep.

At dawn the little guy still refused the bottle. He was warmer, but weak and would not suckle or swallow, even with the bottle forced upon him. Having seen kids refuse to nurse before, I knew this was a death sentence for the little guy. With the night sky just pinking on the horizon, I brought him back to the barn where he would presumably either freeze or starve to death in the company of his goat family before our farm sitter arrived midday.

Our sitter had helped name the kids over the phone the prior evening. The firstborn is Samuel, named for our sitter--a Master Gardener friend--who enjoys his moments in the country. The brown kid was named for another good friend, our County Extension Agent who works with the Master Gardener program, Mister Maguire. When I left the farm that morning, even with Samuel and our wonderful neighbors Theresa and Tony on call, I fully expected Leslie Lupine to be parenting only one kid by the time we returned Saturday night.

Well, the temperatures rose and stayed up, so Mister Maguire didn't freeze. And despite his lethargy when Tony checked on the kids, both bucklings were up and nursing when Samuel came to the farm. As I write this, it appears that we do have two new Nubian bucklings: Samuel and Mister Maguire. Welcome kids!