Quote:
ok, so if your goats are just now 10 months and a year, I do hope they're *not* ready to drop kids any day! we generally don't put goat does in to breed until they're a year, and if they're small framed or late growers, until they're at least 18 months. it's a lot to ask of a goat to have to grow a baby when they're not done growing up themselves yet. in addition, bucks may be ready to breed as early as 4 months, but does often take a bit longer to start cycling. they may have started at 6 months, or earlier or later... hard to know unless you're paying reeeealy close attention.
that said, it's possible they're bred, but not near end of term, so you'll just have to keep an eye out for the signs of impending kids. being first timers, they may not give clear clues (of course, they may not anyway...
).
photos of their udders, a side view, a top view will help to identify what's what, we still may not be able to tell... some are just like that... but we can try.
bagging up can happen from a month or more before kidding to 12 hours after kidding... I've got one we start milking 3 weeks or a month before she kids because she bags up so early... it's a clue that you're in the neighborhood though.
pooching is good evidence, but I don't see it on these goats yet.
it's possible your goats weren't mature enough to start cycling this year before the breeding season ended... I don't know if your goats are year-round breeders or not.
as to starting your milking program - the only way to know for sure with field-bred goats without an untrasound is wait. with controlled breeding goats (put in with the buck for a known 30 or 60 day period) you can know the date range for kids, and if you don't have kids in that window, you know they didn't get bred. or you can buy in-milk nannies who've already kidded. other than that? well, it takes 5 months to make kids, so you'll have kids 5 months after they bred, and can start milking sometime after that.
what's your plan for raising the kids? are you keeping the kids on? pulling them and bottle feeding powdered milk replacer? milk-sharing with the kid?
we give the first 2-4 weeks of milk to the kid - they stay with the momma and we don't milk. once they're well established, if the mom has excess milk capacity she's not using, we start milk sharing (kids are separated from moms overnight in a small pen in their night barn and we milk in the morning. then the kid goes in with the mom for the day). once the kids are well grown (2-3 months) we wean and we get all the milk. any late bloomers might be weaned later. we find this program makes for well grown healthy kids, and we're getting more than enough milk for our own use this way. if we were working as a commercial dairy, we'd probably do this differently. some folks give the kids 1-2 days of colostrum on the nanny, then switch them to 100% bottle feeding so they can have all the milk. I haven't been pleased with the quality of the kids that were raised this way (we bought some as part of a herd purchase) so even if we were wanting maximum production from the does, I think I'd still give the kids at least the first 30 days before weaning.
ETA: we do have a couple of very high produciton does... those we milk from day one, even though we're leaving the kid on full time because they simply make so much more milk than the kids can drink. if we didn't milk these, they'd have udder damage from overproduction.