Goat Health: How to Graft a Baby Goat

Grafting allows goat kids to nurse frequently instead of having to wait for a bottle.

Grafting a baby goat is the process of getting a lactating goat to accept and nurse another goat's kid as her own. The most common reasons for needing to graft a goat baby include the death of a mother goat or having your doe give birth to more kids than she can provide milk for. This often occurs with triplet or quadruplet births. According to David Pugh, author of "Sheep and Goat Medicine," grafting is a good management practice since it allows young goat kids to consume milk in small quantities as often as they want throughout the day.

Things You'll Need

• Foster doe
• Large sock
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Choose an appropriate doe as the foster mother. Look for a calm, quiet doe in your goat herd that has only one other kid and produces ample milk; if possible, opt for a dairy goat breed, such as a Nubian or Toggenburg goat, since these breeds are bred to produce extra milk. Try to find a doe that kidded on the same day or within just a few days of the foster baby; doing so helps ensure that the babies are both about the same size and will not bully each other.

2. Cut the end from a large sock with a pair of scissors. Make four leg slits in the sock and slip it onto the body of the foster doe's birth kid as soon as possible after birth; do this as a precautionary measure with any doe that gives birth to only one kid so the scented sock is ready if you need to graft another kid. Leave the sock on the birth kid until you're ready to graft the foster baby. Remove the scent sock from the birth kid. Turn the sock inside out and slip it onto the foster kid out of sight of the foster mother.

3. Secure the foster mother in a small pen, chaining her collar loosely to the side of the pen to encourage her to hold still. Bring the foster kid to the foster doe's udder and place its head near one of her teats. Encourage the kid to latch on to the foster doe's teat by spraying a couple squirts of milk onto the baby's lips.

4. Talk to the foster mother reassuringly to calm her down if she struggles. Once the baby goat latches on and starts to nurse, step back and see how the foster mother reacts. Look for the foster doe to show signs of acceptance, such as nuzzling and licking the foster kid. Leave the foster mother in the kidding pen with her birth kid and the foster kid for several days to ensure that she has accepted the foster baby.

Tips & Warnings

• If the foster mother recently gave birth and you still have access to the fetal membranes that surrounded her newborn goat, don rubber gloves and rub the membranes on the foster kid; according to Susan Schoenian, Sheep & Goat Specialist at the University of Maryland's Western Maryland Research & Education Center, this practice helps ensure successful grafting on both sheep and goats.

• Watch the foster kid closely for weight loss, which may occur if the doe refuses to accept it. Bottle feed the kid if the doe won't accept it within two to three days.

References

• "Sheep and Goat Medicine"; David Pugh; 2002
• Small Ruminant Info Sheet: Raising Lambs and Kids Artificially