Kid Rearing
A successful kid rearing programme ensures that the replacement animals coming into your herd are healthy, well-grown and in the best condition to produce high milk yields.
Newborn kids are left with their mums for approximately 24 hours before being brought into the nursery area. During this time they are able to drink colostrum, a nutrient dense feed, giving them the energy and immunity they need for a good start to life. Following this they are housed in a warm, dry space set up with small pens. They are initially bottle fed and then transitioned onto adlib feeders.
Replacement kids are often not actively fed goat colostrum / fresh goat milk once they have been taken off their mothers. This is to reduce the likelihood of the spread of diseases such as CAE and Johnes, for which milk is the highest source of transmission. When available, fresh cow’s colostrum can be fed to replacement kids as an alternative. Kids not being kept as replacements go into the Cabrito programme which is a QCONZ certified ‘veal’ programme. These kids are fed any surplus whole milk as well as being supplemented with powdered milks.
Kids should receive adlib access to straw or hay within a couple of days of being born. Replacement kids will also be offered a starter meal from the age of 2-3 weeks onwards, which they will increase the consumption of over a period of weeks until it becomes one of their main sources of nutrition.
Hand Rearing
Most kids in a commercial setting will not be removed from their mothers until at least 24 hours post-birth which provides the kids with essential colostrum needed for a healthy stat to life. After that, they are brought into a housing area specifically setup for kid rearing and and are hand reared.
It may be tempting to think that it would in the kids' best interests to stay with their mothers for longer. However, the opposite is true. It is common for the first born baby to be 'forgotten about' by the mum as she continues in labour with the next 2 - 3 babies, meaning the longer they are left with their mothers, the higher the risk of one not being cleaned nor fed properly in their vital early hours of life. The babies also get very mobile within a few hours of birth which can see them wandering off into other pens or across vehicle path ways. Some does will mother other babies but others will bully babies who aren't their own.
Pen Setup
Types of Feeders
As with pen setups, there are many different viable feeder set ups. Mony commercial options are available but witha bit of creativity, you can make kid feeders out of all sorts of containers.
Regardless of the manufacturer, all kid feeders should feature:
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soft teats designed specifically for kids or lambs
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a reciptacle that holds the milk in a manner that keeps it clean, free from pests and will not allow kids to climb or fall into it
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be easy to keep clean
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be secured or stable enough to prevent kids from knocking it over
The three most common ones are hanging feeders, tube feeders, and automatic feeders.
Adlib v Set Feeding
A small amount of research into the growth rates of feeding kids on ablib systems versus set feeding has been done, with inconclusive results. Adlib feeding allows the kids to feed as often as they like, which is good for small tummies and milk that digests quickly. Adlib feeding also requires less feeders as one feeder per pen is sufficent for a group 20 or so kids, as long as it can hold enough volume of milk to last until the next time it is toppped up.
Set feeding involves putting feeders in a set times during the day and removing them from the pen when the feed is finished. Set feeding means that all kids in the group come up to feed at the same time. This has the advantage of ensuring that ALL kids get up to feed, whereas with an adlib system, a sick or weak kid could easily stop feeding properly and not be noticed. Because milk isn't sitting in a feeder and being topped up continuously, it stays fresher and it is easier to keep the feeders clean. The downside is that you need enough feeders for there to be at least 1 teat per kid in the pen and to stay until the group has finished so you can remove the feeders. Having the ability to feed one third / one half of the kids at once means that by the time you have put out that number of feeders, the first group will be close to finished and you can start moving them on to the next mob. On our farm, we use a mixture of both.
Birth to Weaning
Weeks 0 - 2
During this stage, the focus is on keeping the babies warm, dry, and well fed. Colostrum needs to be the first milk fed for the first 1 - 3 days, with them gradually moving to whole milk, either in powdered form or fresh milk. Kids need to receive at least 10% of their body weight in milk daily. So a 6 kg kid needs at least 600 ml of milk over the course of 3 - 4 feeds (or more if on an adlib system). Some kids will learn to feed from teat feeders with ease whilst others will prove a little more challenging - and the really cunning ones will learn that its much nicer to be given a warm bottle and a cuddle than to feed themselves! All rearers have their own system and no one system is better than another, as long as the kids are getting the nutrition they need. Our system used to involve feeding each kid by bottle for at least the first feed once they have been brought into the rearing shed. We have now moved to a system whereby they are trained onto feeders with very soft teats right from the start.
During this phase. the kids should be vaccinated against clostridial diseases and disbudded.
Is disbudding important?
Yes it is! Disbudding is done at a young age, before horns start to develop. It is performed under sedation and causes very little discomfort (if any). Conversely, if the horns are not removed, they become hazardous to the goat itself, and even if the goat is not in the slightest bit aggressive, the horns become a danger to people and other goats. Friendly goats who like to rub themselves against you can inadvertently hook you with their horn or for anyone working around the head of the goat, a simple lift of the head is a potential for harm. Horned goats will experience difficulties in getting their heads between feed rails and constantly run the risk of getting their head stuck in between gates, rails and other bits and pieces around the housing space. Cycling goats will also use their horns on other does, often resulting in minor injuries or worse, broken bones.
Weeks 3 - 6
During these next few weeks of life, the kids will be drinking more and more milk as well as looking for hard feed to start nibbling on. Straw or hay is the ideal first feed, and some sort of grain or meal should follow this. Initially the goats will only nibble at hard feeds, so small containers that are refreshed frequently, are ideal. As they stat to eat more hard feed, it will be important to ensure enough feed space for all the kids to eat at once. Sufficient feed space is important in ensuring all kids get equal access to the nutrition their growing bodies need, but also reduces injuries and mortalities that can result if they try to cram into the same space, fighting for the feed.
Naval infections not already identified in the first few weeks may start to become apparent. In the early stages, a navel infection may present as a red and swollen navel area but as the kid gets older, a navel infection is more likely to be identified by stiff/swollen joints and general ill-thrift.
to Diseases such as pneumonia, listeria, clostridrial infections and coccidiosis need to be watched for and treated accordingly if noticed. Nutritional scours will also be common. Good hygiene around feeding equipment and the storage/preparation of milk feeds is important in eliminating this, as is ensuring feed is kept consistent. Avoid changing quickly from one milk source to another, and start including any new hard feeds slowly. Look for hard feeds and/or milk powders that contain a coccidiostat.
Weeks 7 - 12
During this time, milk will become less important in the diet and the kids should be moving from eating 250 g of concentrates per day, towards 500 g each per day, along with qood quality hay or straw, and silage. Some kids will self-wean. The others can be weaned by reducing the amount of milk available at each feed, or by decreasing the concentration rate of milk powder mixes.
Weaning Weights
Kids are weaned at around 12 weeks of age. The ideal is for them to have reached a minimum of 16 kgs by this stage. Some farms will have a large variation in kid weights, with heavier ones reaching 20kg+ by this stage and others struggling to get to 12 kg. Some of this can be due to variances in ages due to kidding spreads but in many cases is also directly related to the quality and quantity of colostrum they received in their first 24 hours and access to quality feed. Whilst it is difficult to counter this later on, smaller kids can be drafted into separate pens where they can be offered more feed concentrates and experience less competition from other kids.
With each doe producing 2 - 4+ off-spring each, kid numbers increase quickly over the first few weeks, Having reliable and caring support staff to help out over this time is essential. Each baby that comes in must be taught to feed from the feeders, which initially can involve individual bottle feeding. Keeping feeders and pens clean and hygienic takes time but is vital in ensuring the on-going healthy development of the kids.
There are many different ways to structure your pen setup but it should allow for small pens for the kids to start off in, with the ability to transition logistically to bigger pens as they get physically bigger and increasingly mobile.
Kid rearing pens need to be warm, sheltered and draft free but with adequate ventilation and exposure to sunlight on fine days, where feasible.
Before the start of kidding, remove any old bedding and thoroughly clean the feeding equipment and pen dividers, including the use of a sanitiser such as Vircon. Follow this with the addition of a deep layer of clean, dry bedding. Wood shavings make a soft and absorbent bedding material. If this is not readily availble, straw is a good alternative. A layer of straw under wood shavings can increase the drainage of the bedding. Zeolite (absorbent clay) aids in increasing the absorancy of the bedding as well as being a good toxin binder. Whichever bedding material you use, it will need frequent refreshing in order to keep the pens clean, dry and hygenic.
Hanging feeders are good for young kids as they do not need to suck up through a tube, they are able to be moved from pen to pen and are easy to keep clean. The main disadvantage of these types of feeders is that as soon as the teats start to become worn or get little bite hole in them, the milk will continuously drip out.
Tube Feeders mean the kids need to suck the milk up in order to drink. This system is great for older kids (with stronger sucks) and when they are more likely to chew holes in the teats, as the milk can drip out. Large rubbish bins or drums can be used to make cost effective tube feeders - but can ether be easily knocked over when empty and/or difficult to remove from the pen for cleaning - either because you get mobbed by the goats or old milk left in the drum makes it heavy to lift out.
Tube feeders where the teats are mounted on a board and teh tubes are threaded through to a space on the outside of the pen are the easiest to manage in terms of being to refil them and swap them out for cleaning. The tubs holding the milk can't be knocked over or climbed into.
Automatic Feeders will mix water and powder on-demand for the kids. When setup and running well, they make kid feeding easy as a large number of kids can be fed without the need to daily mix large volumes of milk, and no feeding tubs to clean. The automatic feeder has a 1 litre jug that needs to be kept clean, and the delivery tubes need to be monitored and cleaned if necessary. Apart from that, as long as the machine is kept topped up with powder, the daily workload is minimal.
The bigest drawback with automatic feeders are, if anything goes wrong with either your power or water supply (including events such as morning frosts), or the powder is not topped up before it has run out, you will have a large number of hungry kids all wanting to be fed at once. If this happens, you need to have a backup system for either separating the kids so that only a small group feeds at once, or have a set of drum or hanging feeders you can add to the pen to reduce the demaind on the machine until the feeding freenzy is over and they settle back into adlib feeding. Regardless of how you cope with getting the kids backing into a feeding routine after a machine fault, there is a high risk of kids gorging themselves (and bloating) at that first feed after the machine is back online.
A further issue with the automatic feeders, is that, by nature of their design, they will continue to make a mix whenever the jug is empty, regardless of WHY the jug is empty. So, if a tube comes off or a teat is leaky and dripping, the machine will jjst keep topping itself up - if this happens during the night you can come in and find all your pens flooded and a whole hopper of milk powder wasted! Having your teats placed higher than the level of the mik in the jug helps eliminate continual dripping, and having your machine located outside of the immediate pen area reduces the chance of tubes being pulled off.
Regardless of which feeder type you go for, there will always be that one to defy the system!
Young kids huddle together for warmth which can lead to smothering. Keeping them in small pens reduces drafts and the number of kids in any given pen which, on our farm, is very effective at minimising losses in the first weeks.
Bottle feeding is an effective way to encourage weak or very young kids to suck properly from a teat. Always look for ways in which you can speed up the process by feeding multiple kids at once.
Adding a bale to the pen allows adlib access to the hay as well as proving something for the kids to jump and play on.
Hay or straw can be feed in small feeders secured to the wall.
As hard feeds become a bigger part of the diet, ensuring sufficient feed space is important.
When implementing set-feeding, you must ensure there are sufficient feeders to ensure a minimum of one teat per kid so that they can all feed at the same time.
A series of small pens that transition into bigger spaces works well for the early weeks of kid rearing.
Kid Vaccinations
Although your kids should have received passive immunity via their mothers colostrum, as they grow, they need vaccinations of their own to boost their on-going immunity.
Some vaccinations are 'one-off' shots, where as others require annual boosters. Clostridial vaccines such as Covexin and Glanvax need an initial sensitiser shot, followed by another shot approximately 6 weeks later. You can fin more information about vaccines here.
FREE: Download a Kid Vaccination Plan Template
(in editable excel format). Vaccinations for your main herd are listed in the Goat Healthcare Plan on the Preventative Health page..
