Goatkeeping: Managing Multiples

Between Dan’s hand and nine baby goat kids our life is pretty full at the moment. With all those kids, though, how are the mamas managing to feed them all?

Goats commonly give birth to twins and singles, occasionally triplets. Breeds like Kinders and Nigerian Dwarfs are also known to have quads! Unlike a cow, however, a goat has only two teats. A cow has one udder, four quadrants, and four teats. A goat has one udder with two halves and two teats.

So what happens when she has more than two babies? Well, goats aren’t very good at taking turns and sharing, so how do I know everybody is getting enough milk?

For the first couple of weeks the kids are small and don’t take a lot of milk. Usually there is no problem with everybody getting enough, but I can still monitor that by weighing them. Any kid not gaining weight is not getting enough milk. I can put this kid and his mom in a pen several times a day to make sure he or she gets as much milk as they want.

As the kids get larger there is more competition for a teat. Sometimes the doe produces plenty of milk, but the problem is that the larger and stronger kids usually hog the milk. Typically these are bucklings. One strategy is to start the little boys off on bottles from the git-go. Milk the doe out a bit and offer it to the boys in a bottle. If they learn that milk comes from a bottle, that’s how they’ll expect to get it. They can stay with their sisters and mother, and everybody will get enough milk.

The other advantage to this technique is that there is no cold turkey weaning. Bucklings usually reach breeding age before they are ready to be weaned, and therefore must be separated from the girls. This means weaning is abrupt and results in no small amount of hollering! Days worth of hollering. I’ve sometimes expected the police to turn up at any moment to ask if I was torturing somebody. 

So that’s a definite advantage to bottle feeding the boys, but it requires a little bit of extra work and time. Is there an easier option?

There is. Once the kids are nibbling hay and grass it’s possible to separate them from their mothers at night. I use our kidding pen and let individuals from triplets or quads spend the night there while their smaller siblings stay with mom all night. If they’re all about the same size and weight I alternate them.

Of Jessie’s triplets I put her buckling in the kidding pen, because he’s the biggest and he makes sure he gets plenty of milk. Of Daisy’s quads, I alternate kids. One night two of them stay in the kidding pen, the next night it’s the other two. Violet’s twins also spend the night there so I can milk her in the morning.

Of course none of them like it, but to sweeten the deal I give these kids a pan with a little Chaffhaye to nibble on. They think it’s a treat and soon learn to go into the pen at night without me chasing them all over the barn to catch them.

In the morning the remaining kids are shooed outside while their mothers eat breakfast. After the does are finished eating I open the door to the kidding pen and the kids who spent the night there come rushing out to get their milk. Once they’ve had their fill I open the gate to outdoors and it’s goat business as usual.

With everybody is getting enough milk they grow happy and well. And that’s what it’s all about.