Goat kid with bloated belly?

[DellaMyDarling]

Any goat farms around where you can buy goats milk? Raw is most appropriate but you need to make a critical judgement call regarding the dairy so as not to introduce illness to the kid.

In particular, this babe may need colostrum. I'm betting auction baby was not given colostrum by breeder. Just as in humans, colostrum provides major first few days of sustenance, and critically, immunities. Good breeders will ensure that even bottle kids get some.

I agree with overfeeding assessment. Goats have an interesting stomach system. Young kids divert milk to a different stomach, essentially. This stomach is designed for small frequent feedings. Too much at once, it backs up into the ruminating portion of the stomach system. Before a kid is ruminating, this milk will literally just rot there. This can make a kid die.

Is your kid the only kid? Kids need Goats! Goats need Goats!

 

[cassie]

Any goat farms around where you can buy goats milk? Raw is most appropriate but you need to make a critical judgement call regarding the dairy so as not to introduce illness to the kid.

In particular, this babe may need colostrum. I'm betting auction baby was not given colostrum by breeder. Just as in humans, colostrum provides major first few days of sustenance, and critically, immunities. Good breeders will ensure that even bottle kids get some.

I agree with overfeeding assessment. Goats have an interesting stomach system. Young kids divert milk to a different stomach, essentially. This stomach is designed for small frequent feedings. Too much at once, it backs up into the ruminating portion of the stomach system. Before a kid is ruminating, this milk will literally just rot there. This can make a kid die.

Is your kid the only kid? Kids need Goats! Goats need Goats!

Raw goat milk is not a good idea unless the herd has been tested and is certified CAE free. CAE is caprine arthritis encephalitis and is transmitted to kids primarily by raw goat milk. Pasteurized goat milk is safe and kids do very well on plain old cow milk from the store. In fact, I used to feed my calves goat milk and the kids got cow milk. CAE won't affect the calves and the cow milk would not be infected with the CAE virus. Feeding the kids cow milk saved me the work and bother of pasteurizing goat milk.

 

[DellaMyDarling]

Raw goat milk is not a good idea unless the herd has been tested and is certified CAE free. CAE is caprine arthritis encephalitis and is transmitted to kids primarily by raw goat milk. Pasteurized goat milk is safe and kids do very well on plain old cow milk from the store. In fact, I used to feed my calves goat milk and the kids got cow milk. CAE won't affect the calves and the cow milk would not be infected with the CAE virus. Feeding the kids cow milk saved me the work and bother of pasteurizing goat milk.

Absolutely, not disagreed.
Any GOOD dairy or seller should have a clean herd. There's a local woman who sells raw and she keeps her current tests available inside the little store on her property. I trust her because I know she regularly tests her milk and has stopped sales when things came back poorly.
You can pasteurize at home if you have fresh milk. I haven't made my mind up on this yet. Our goats are a clean herd but we are all immune compromised and didn't grow up drinking raw milk.
Cost versus time certainly comes into play with any milk option available.

How is the baby doing?

 

[cassie]

Absolutely, not disagreed.
Any GOOD dairy or seller should have a clean herd. There's a local woman who sells raw and she keeps her current tests available inside the little store on her property. I trust her because I know she regularly tests her milk and has stopped sales when things came back poorly.
You can pasteurize at home if you have fresh milk. I haven't made my mind up on this yet. Our goats are a clean herd but we are all immune compromised and didn't grow up drinking raw milk.
Cost versus time certainly comes into play with any milk option available.

How is the baby doing?

Just a comment. Unless you test you will not know if your herd is CAE free or not. A goat can be infected and not show symptoms for years. You are right about people being immune compromised. Too many children grow up in a world of germicidal this and disinfectant that to the point they never develop a good immune system and the first time they are exposed to a bug with some teeth they get very sick. Like many people of my generation I grew up on raw milk. When I had my dairy I drank raw milk but my kids got pasteurized milk if I didn't have cow milk available. I was on a CAE prevention protocol, but once you have it in your herd, CAE is very difficult to completely eradicate. If I were to buy goats today, I would not buy any stock that had not been tested and was known to be CAE free.