pregnant goat, possibly dead baby, no milk

Help please.

We raise Boer/Boer cross goats. We have been having babies left and right. We have had one of our does penned up for a couple weeks, she was due anytime when we put her up (her ligaments were soft, bag was really full, etc). Well she never had a baby. I felt her a few days ago and you can feel the baby, but it isn’t moving and her bag is drying up. I felt her again today and the baby is in the same place and still no movement and her bag is smaller then before.

Anyone ever had this happen? What do we need to do?

I'm hoping an experienced goat herder will reply.... I can only tell you what I remember from childhood with the goats we had.

We would have kids often but one year our nanny goat became pregnant and got well past her due date. When she did go into labor, we had to put the kid out: the kid had become gangrenous.  Since my mother told me to go help my dad, I don't know if he induced labor somehow.  Needless to say it was horrific and the nanny died a week or so later inspite of the fact we pulled the dead kid out.

If you can, get a vet or some local goat herder with years of experience as soon as you can if you want to save her.

Sounds like she'll need to be induced very soon. You could look into herbs that will help with this, or see if a vet or nearby farmer can do it.

I’m gonna call my vet tomorrow, and hope they can give me some oxytocin, but I’m pretty sure “they will have to see her”. I just don’t wanna lose her too!

If it were me, I would get a vet ASAP

How have things worked out?

Vet thinks baby might be alive. But momma is very wormy, apparently our dewormer isn’t working too well.. bet had to give her cydectin, she was also running a fever so she is also on LA200.. neither of which has been approved for pregnant goats, so she will likely abort the pregnancy..

What dewormers do y’all use on pregnant does?

It is good the doe will survive.  We can hope for the best for the baby. Thanks for the reply.  In Feb we went through a 2 week run with Listeria with one of our goats. He is ok now.

Yes, vet said we are lucky she is still alive. It would be awesome if baby is still alive but if not, at least she will be okay. She can have more babies... wow, we haven’t had any of that luckily. Glad yours is okay. We have a problem with foot scald, seems like every time it rains we have to treat multiple goats feet. And it has been raining what seems like non stop all winter.
And thank you for replying!

Kristin Richey wrote:Vet thinks baby might be alive. But momma is very wormy, apparently our dewormer isn’t working too well.. bet had to give her cydectin, she was also running a fever so she is also on LA200.. neither of which has been approved for pregnant goats, so she will likely abort the pregnancy..

What dewormers do y’all use on pregnant does?

In 20 years of raising milk goats and milking them, the only thing that I have ever used for wormer is pine needles and fir needles.  I just give them a regular supply of tree branches from my trees.  I have to keep the branches trimmed up for wood quality down the road anyways and just 4 trees will give me a truck load of branches.

The turpentine in the needles and bark is a natural dewormer.

We have used pine trees/branches before but we don’t have a whole bunch on our property. We did give them our Christmas tree though!

I'm glad your doe looks like she'll survive. Were you sure of her due date?

We don't discuss non-organic wormers on Permies. There's been times when I've used diatomaceous earth, but in general I prevent worms by keeping goat food off the ground and supplementing them with the minerals they need. Copper is talked about a lot as a mineral that works against worms,  some people are afraid of giving too much of this because at too high a dose it can be toxic, I've never had problems with it though.

Plants high in tannins are good to feed to goats to get rid of worms.

Right now my goats eat trees, but I'm establishing silvopasture, and once that's done I'll be keeping an eye on grass height and rotational grazing to make sure they're not eating grass that's too close to the ground, and that the pasture has a chance to rest and break the worm cycle before goats go back there.