My wonderful nubian doe just had 4 kids Sunday afternoon! They're doing great but it's a struggle to keep up the amount of milk I need for them. I am bottle feeding them their mother's milk to make it easier for weaning, etc. For the past 2 days I have milked the mom 3 times a day to get enough milk for everyone because I've heard from others who have done this but I don't know how long it would be considered "safe" to do this. I also have some milk replacer I can give them but I would rather give them the real stuff if I can but I don't want to hurt the mother.

Thanks for any input.

-- Missy Erving (ervings@ctel.net), June 14, 2000

Answers

Mix the milk replacer in with the mother's milk to get enough. I have done that for lambs and it works pretty well. That way no one baby gets all replacer.

-- beckie (sunshine_horses@yahoo.com), June 14, 2000.

It won't hurt her to milk her 3 X a day, just be sure to feed her very well, with a grain that has at least 16-18% protein, you could give her black oil sunflower seeds, too, to boost her production and to keep her from getting run down. If one is a buck kid and you don't want it, you could take it to auction, and then you would have enough milk for the doelings.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@transport.com), June 14, 2000.

Congrats on the quads! I personally have not experienced this but my suggestion would be to do as Rebekah mentioned and I would also give each kid some ID-1, Immuno-G or Goat stress, all are colestrum supplements and immune system boosters. Give 1cc 2 x's per day orally for 3 days. It works fantastic. You can get the ID-1 from a ron Keener, not sure of his addy but maybe someone might have it, the goat stress is available from Hoeggers and Immuno-g from http://www.springbriar.com Good luck and keep us posted! If you had to you could even use cow milk as a supplement from the store. To find out more go to the goat shed at msn communities... there was a post with this on it recently.

Bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), June 14, 2000.

congrats that is wonderful. We had 2 sets of quads born last year and we just left them with theirs mum and they are all doing great. When it was time to seperate them we put them in another pen and once in awhile they would get out and nurse but not much and they lost their voices for a bit too. They are all together now and the does are now epecting. Good luck to you.

-- megan milliken (millikenfarm@telus.net), June 19, 2000.

Good job on the quads! We find that they mostly run in families, though the boys don't pass this on. It will hurt nothing to milk 3 times a day, and lots of us do it for the whole 10 months. Even though you will be topping bottles off with milk replacer, still try to use a kid milk replacer or if you can afford it grocery store whole vitamin E milk. Purina or Land0lakes are the two that give the best results (we don't use them, but we have had great controversies on other goat forums about this and these were the two that mostly came up and that were readiably available.) Also with milking 3 times a day, this will give her a chance to have lots of medium sized grain meals, alot of my best milkers need 5 pounds of grain, to milk 8 pounds or more and still stay in good flesh! Bernice is right about the ID-1, I ordered mine from Linda Campbells great site: http:/www.khimairafarm.com Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 19, 2000.