MULTIPLE BIRTHS
Raising Triplets, Quadruplets, and Quintuplets

At the risk of sounding irreverent, I'll repeat what I've always said about a doe's giving birth to more than two kids: Triplets, quadruplets, and quintuplets are God's sick joke on a dam with only two teats.

Let's face facts: Out in "nature" and without any producer intervention, two or more of the kids are likely to die, with only the strongest surviving. It is called survival of the fittest. That's how the world works in every species except humans living in westernized countries. Even among humans, a large number of people on this planet spend most of their days looking for enough food to survive and a place to sleep.

So if you are raising goats and want to maximize your production, you must give a dam with three or more kids some assistance in feeding them or you are going to lose money. Does with three or more kids and does with udder problems (mastitis in one side, for example) get fed pelleted feed twice rather than once per day, plus I provide alfalfa hay in addition to free-choice top-quality grass hay to these does. Kids are watched carefully to determine if they need more milk. Once kids are bonded to their dams, I arrange for them to get extra milk from another dam who has surplus milk available. In a worst-case scenario, I will supplement the kid with bottles of milk replacer while leaving the kid with its dam.

I have written articles on fostering kids onto another dam who has fewer kids and extra milk, about bottle feeding (if no other dam exists to foster the kid), on overfeeding bottle babies on milk, about stomach tubing kids, on how to monitor proper milk feeding and consumption, about how to tell if a kid is getting enough to eat, on checking udders for mastitis and congestion and orifice problems, about the problems encountered when multiple kids are of different physical sizes and strengths and sexes, about never breeding does back while they are nursing kids, on the importance of allowing the kid to be goat and maintain its ability to ADAPT to its surroundings, and about the additional nutritional needs of lactating does and growing kids -- which appear on the Articles page of my website www.tennesseemeatgoats.com and in MeatGoatMania on Yahoogroups. Access to both sites is free. Join and learn.

Suzanne W. Gasparotto, Onion Creek Ranch, Texas 5/11/13