The Things They Never Tell You

All of our cashmere goats have had their kids. We had 14 kids from 8 does. Unfortunately 3 of the kids died. I think if we would have had prior experience at this, we could have prevented all 3 deaths. I spent a year intensively researching how to raise cashmere goats, but there is only so much you can learn from books, classes and farm tours. The rest you have to experience.

One thing I never dreamed I would experience is treating mastitis in a goat. Mastitis is an infection in the udder. I’m not sure if Molly has it or not, but she has not been letting her kids nurse. We did not realize that until we found one dead. I’ve learned a lot about how to recognize unhealthy kids this year.

Mastitis is a common reason that a doe stops nursing her kids. To treat it, I purchased a large plastic syringe filled with antibiotics and injected half the medicine into each teat. It was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be and the medicine only cost $5.20. I wish human medicine was so cheap!

We secured Molly on the goat stand and gave her a bucketful of oats. Ryan held one of her back legs up so she couldn’t kick. I injected the medicine while Molly happily munched on her oats. It didn’t seem to bother her at all. We bottle fed her doeling to allow time for the antibiotics to work. The next morning I milked Molly so her baby wouldn’t ingest the antibiotics, then reunited them that afternoon. That was 3 days ago and mom and kid seem to be doing well.

We haven’t named this baby girl yet. She is small and sweet, and she has the biggest set of lungs of any of the kids. She’s LOUD! Leave a comment with your suggestions.