Herron Hill Dairy Goats
Snow Pea: Atkins Diet Poster Goat
Snow Pea has always been chubby. She (like a lot of Nigerians) is the easiest of easy keepers. And of course, she loves to eat. More than any of our other NDs, Snow Pea has a distinctly undairy conformation: she is short and stubby like a pygmy, without the length of body associated with dairy character. Snow Pea was bred as a coming yearling, the first year we had Nigerians. Until that time, we had never had any serious dystocia. That was about to change.
With our big girls, as they came near their kidding date, we would add a bit of grain to their ration and generally start preparing them for kidding. We did the same with Snow Pea, not knowing any better.
About a month from her due date, Snow Pea began sitting like a dog. We did not recognize it right away, but this meant that she was simply too fat to breathe comfortably when she was lying down like a normal goat. The growing kids had taken up the little remaining room in her chubby little barrel.
About ten days from her kidding date, Snow Pea prolapsed her rectum - there wasn't enough room for it inside her body any more. We were able to reinsert the prolapsed tissue, and immediately took her to the vet. He recommended a wait-and-see attitude and pointed out the obvious: she was too fat. With a week left to go in her pregnancy, there was not much we could do about it. She was confined to a stall to keep her quiet.
Over the next week Snow Pea prolapsed twice more, and we twice restored her prolapsed tissue. Snow Pea went into labor on a Saturday morning right on schedule - of course on a weekend when the vet is hardest to reach - and it was apparent immediately that something was wrong. I always keep a "kidding box" in the stall with the pregnant does. Snow Pea's labor was obviously serious but did not seem to progress. After a couple of hours, she began to jump on and off the box, crying out in pain and circling. In retrospect we realized that she was trying to reposition the kids - they were simply not moving down the birth canal, largely because of her chubby state.
We put in our first call to the vet, but he was out on another emergency. A bubble finally appeared, and after a long, painstaking effort - Snow Pea pushing and us pulling - we were able to get Snow Pea's daughter Dot out. Dot was in remarkably good shape, considering the length of her ordeal, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon: within a couple of minutes, another leg - a single leg, not a pair - emerged from the birth canal. Again we did out best to gently pull the kid, but it was stuck fast and Snow Pea was exhausted. There was no room inside her to reposition the kid, even if we could get in. The leg was not moving, and by this time we hoped, at best, to be able to save Snow Pea.
We were finally able to get the vet on the phone - by this time it was getting late in the evening - and within a few minutes we loaded Snow Pea and little Dot into the car and headed out at top speed for the clinic ten miles away. The vet examined Snow Pea quickly; he could not make any progress extricating the kid, and it seemed likely, in any case, that the kid was dead. Snow Pea was quickly anesthetized and prepped for a c-section.
As her belly was being shaved, the vet's assistant noticed something - the forlorn little leg, still protruding, had just twitched. Within a couple of minutes Snow Pea's son Snowy was born, limp but not quite lifeless. He began to breathe, erratically, after a couple of minutes of CPR. After a half hour with an oxygen mask propped over his little head, he was breathing normally. We returned home with Snow Pea, Snowy, and Dot all alive if not exactly well.
One of Snow Pea's rear legs was paralyzed for a month after the delivery, from all the trauma and pressure to her nerves over the course of her long, painful labor. She gradually returned to normal and now lives on a diet of local grass hay - no grain, no alfalfa. Even so, she is still a fat girl, and will not be bred again.
Snowy was unable to stand or nurse for a long time. He was tube fed and kept warm for several days. On Day Three, he came on like a light bulb - zero to sixty overnight - and never looked back. He was our favorite kid of the year. He went to a new home where he is a little boy's pet wether when he was two months old. We cried like fools when he left, it was terribly embarrassing.
The morals of the story: a) don't let your Nigerian does get fat. b) be nice to the vet if you think you may need to get him/her out of bed some time. c) trust your instincts; if something feels wrong, it probably is.