As Lambing and Kidding Season approaches, make sure you have your supply kit clean, organized, and ready for emergency use. Having the following items on hand, and quickly available will help you be prepared for assisting your animals when they need it most:
- Having a good relationship with a vet is a necessity. A vet that has seen your herd prior to emergencies will make your life easier when you need help in the middle of the night to assist your best ewe or doe.
- Provide the best quality, leafiest hay for ewes and does after they lamb or kid. A second cut alfalfa will help provide the extra energy and protein to help with milk production. The higher quality hay will also help their reproductive tract recover, and will help their immune system to fight any infections.
- Having milk replacer, and colostrum replacer on hand will help save babies should their mothers fail to milk properly.
- To prevent scours, it is important that newborn kids and lambs are bottle fed properly. A nursing kid or lamb stretches her neck out to get milk from her mother. Due to the stretching process, the milk goes past a slit in the esophagus, bypassing the first two stomachs, and ending up in the omasum. Here it is mixed with digestive fluids and is passed on to the fourth stomach, or abomasum. An overly hungry, pan-fed kid or lamb must bend down to drink, rather than stretch upward. Some of the milk slops through the slit in the food tube and falls into the first stomach, the rumen, where it doesn’t belong. There is nothing else in this compartment, since milk is the only feed consumed. There is no bulk from hay, therefor gas forms, and scours are likely to result.
