I am sorry for your troubles. While I am not a goat expert, many animals are susceptible to reproductive diseases that may cause spontaneous abortion or premature births. There are vaccinations available for breeding stock--you should check with your vet. Another cause for miscarriage is moldy feed. Moldy feed, hay or straw should not be available to breeding stock to eat. Old feed should be cleaned out. There may be other nutritional causes, again, best checked by a vet. As far as your mothers dying, they could have died from a uterine infection caused from the aborted fetuses. After delivery, I would check all of my mothers for infection for several days after the birth by taking their temperature rectally. Any animal having an elevated temp would immediately go on antibiotics. Here's a tip on taking temps: Get a thermometer with an end that you can attach a string and a clip (if it isn't some sort of instant read thermometer). Then you can insert the thermometer and then clip the end to the tail or hair, thus not losing the thermometer in the bedding, etc. You can find out more specific information by having a post-mortem check done by your vet or local university. Good luck.

All the extras are not for heat, it is so they get a number that will survive the first 48 hours leaving you with the amount that you ordered. This saves them having to credit or ship replacements. Most of the times you'll keep loosing chicks after the guarantee time is up. Out of the last 1400 chicks I've ordered in the past 3 years only 4 were lost. One died from smothering during shipping, two were lost to a rat, the last one due to being stepped on after being dropped. There are only two different tests you can do yourself, but they are for Pullorum (you'll need to go to a 1 day school to be certified-check with you County Cooperative Extension Office) and the other is for the level of e-coli in their poo (this requires a hand counter and a microscope-even a toy one will do). You'll have to learn what e-coli looks like and learn their acceptable levels. E-coli levels can be lowered by feeding probiotic rich feeds or you can buy an additive for their water, one brand is called Fastrack-but there are many brands out there. It is a powerful preventive measure the small poultry keeper can cheaply employ to prevent 7 out of 9 common poultry ailments. Many of these ailments won't kill your birds but will lessen there productivity, be it weight gain in meat birds or eggs in layers. It sounds like you run a clean joint there, when can I move in? 'LOL' Giardia is from drinking water that has been contaminated by animal waste run-off. In dogs there are many natural ways to treat/prevent this. Most find it simpler to vaccinate for it. It is so important if you have water sources to not allow large animals free access to it. It is not only your water but the water of everyone downstream from you. It is so easy to create a reservior (tank) that is feed thru a pipeline from that water source to a reservoir that your animals can drink from. This reservoir can be easily designed to allow one way water flow as not to contaminate the water downstream. When your stream is "yukky" call your county health office. They will back track and find who is the source of this and will take steps to prevent this in the future. Fresh water is important for your birds. This water should be placed in heavy shade to keep water borne organisms at or below safe levels. This is the #one cause of illness in poultry.

Well, She is back!!! We got her back last night. She was at a neighbor's house, quite a ways away. We believe that our schnauzer probably chased her off, or she would have come to the house. The neighbor lady said she came to her porch and was peeking in the window at her! She wants in the house so bad! We secured the door to her pen last night with rope and then this morning we didn't let her see us until after church today. After we fed her we went back to the house for lunch. It didn't take very long before she showed up on the porch. We have no idea how she got out now! We are getting her playmate this week. Surely the playmate will keep her entertained so she won't be wanting to escape so badly. I am so happy to have her back, just don't know how long to expect her to stay!

Cristi...Thanks for the condolences. We were very shaken up over his loss. I just got him this summer. He was a magnificent animal with 11-ennobelments in his pedigree. All the big names (Top Gun, Ubora, Top Brass & Eggsfile) to name a few. I at least got one season of live coverage from him. I also have 68-straws for the future. YEAH! His son lost 5-enobelments from his dad's side...but picked up 2 from his mom's side...so he has 8-enobelments in his 3 generation pedigree. He weighed 11-lbs at birth and has his daddy's chest and legs (so far). I am pretty excited about him. Hopefully he continues to improve / get better over the next couple months. It would kill me to have to whether him for a fair project if he "falls off." We are fairly new. We have been raising our goats for 4 -5 yrs now...bouncing back and forth between Alpines / Boers. I finally made a decision last year to run with our boers...hence buying a nice buck last summer. The wife loves the boers...but her heart is with our Alpines. She has 2 FB Alpine does with one expecting kids in March. She is a great milker / mother. We also have a FB 3-yr old Alpine buck from Stawberry Fields Alpines. Last year they won the 3rd place "Best Herd Award" from the ADGA. So he has an excellent bloodline as well. Right now we have 3 FB Boer does (not counting the new baby girl born 26-Dec). We also have quite a few percentage does (50% - 88%) that we are using their buckling kids for Fair whethers. We are selling / keeping the doe kids (depends on their confirmation). So far...all are keepers. We have 12 kids on the ground right now. (See other post). We are basically just now getting serious... We have an Open Show comming up in April. This will be my first experience in the show ring (with goats). Everyone tells me that I have some really nice animals; especially 2 new bucklings born this year. Two of my FB does are extremely long with perfect markings. One is even 2-teated. We will see. I have several friends that do the "open show circuit." They say they have a lot of fun...even though it is hard to compete sometimes. There are farms / ranches that have some very, very nice animals and do this (raise goats) for a living. They sell replacement stock so the points won at these shows validates their stock...so they put a lot of time and expense into their animals. Once an animal acheives (I think) 80 pts and pass an inspection; the animal is enobeled. Southwinds (my dead buck) had 40+ points from his previous owner showing him as a yearling. For the average "goat guy" like me...it sounds like an upward battle...but I am going to give it a shot. If for nothing else but experience and knowledge we will learn from these people. Brian