Goat Doe Woes

Nettie is due to kid in just seven days and she hasn't bagged up yet.  Normally I have a hard time drying her off, but last year she had a mastitis infection and the medication dried her up after a few weeks of treating her.  Last year her udder looked like it was going to explode almost two weeks before kidding and now she's just got a "saggy baggy" thing going on:  

Wow, I didn't realize how fuzzy she was back there.
Time for a pre-kidding haircut, I'd say!

I'm a bit worried that she won't produce milk for her kids this year because of her bout with mastitis last spring.  And although I obviously would, I really don't want to be bottle feeding kids.  Not only that, but I've been a bad keeper-of goats and never saved / froze any extra colostrum to have on hand in case of such a perdicament.  So I guess I'm going to have to make a trip to the feed store for some "factory" colostrum and milk replacer just in case.  

Our entire herd (all five of them, including insanely-stinky Pan) also got wormed yesterday afternoon:

I normally don't worm them in the winter, but since the weather has been so unusually warm I suspect that there weren't enough freezing days / nights to kill many of the parasites out in the barnyard.

Even though the Ivermectin isn't labeled for goats (as if anything is), it is pretty much standard practice to use that type of wormer on them.  Each goat gets 1mL (or cc) of Ivermectin per 50 pounds of weight.  The syringe and needle in the picture is not used to inject the goats with, but to get the medication out of the container as it is normally given as an injection to cattle.  Once I've filled up the syringe to the appropriate amount, I then squirt it into the drenching gun (the yellow thingy pictured above) for oral administration to the goats.

Since I had everyone clipped to the fence for worming, I figured I may as well keep up with trimming their hooves.  Chop Suey and Pan's feet don't need trimming more than a few times a year; they both have black hooves and are both Nigerian Dwarfs.  But the other gals need a good trimming probably once a month; they all have white hooves and are either purebred Saanen (Nettie & Ishtar) or a Saanen / Nigerian cross (Annette).  Not sure if it's the breed or the color of the hooves that makes the difference in hoof growth.  Trimming the guy's hooves also prove to be more difficult since they are black and it's harder to see the quick and I usually end up nicking one of them and they'll bleed a bit.  That and I need to don my stinky-buck-handling clothing for dealing with Pan.  Peee-U!