Goats are resilient and durable animals. As with most herd animals, their kids stand up and can move pretty fast. A baby goat will start standing within minutes of being born.
Baby goats start walking ten minutes after they are born. Depending on the breed, baby goats can start walking within five minutes of being born. The mother goat will start helping her kids walk as soon as she has stopped kidding.
We’ll be talking about how kids start walking, how their mothers help them, and how to be able to handle these cute little kids. Continue reading to learn some interesting facts about kids.
The Kids Start Walking
A baby goat, called a kid, is born, cleaned, then left alone by the mother to start walking on their own. The mother will leave the kids alone until she has birthed all the kids.
So, the newborn kid, roughly ten minutes old, will go find their mother’s udders and begin nursing. The mother goat will often walk a few feet away from the new kid if she is having more than one.
The kid stands up all on their own, and if they don’t the mother will go back to them after they have finished kidding. The mother will help the kid stand up and nurse, but only after she has finished kidding.
As the kids start to stand up they will be shaky. They will struggle to get their back legs moving and struggle to find sure footing with their front legs. They’ll likely struggle to move and do a sort of crawl for a couple of minutes until they start to nurse. The kid desperately needs to start nursing because they are no longer connected by the umbilical cord. They need to get something in their belly to get their metabolism going.
After the kid starts nursing they will get more steady and sure until they stop shaking and start playing around. Kids love to talk and play with their newfound sure legs.
These kids will start running around within a day. How long really depends on the kid and breed. But it will be within a day. It really should only take a couple of hours for the kids to start playing and being puppy-like.
Kidding Mothers
An important step for the goat kids to start standing is for the mother to properly handle them. This means that you should not touch the kids until they’ve nursed. They’ll be attached by the umbilical cord until the mother chews it off. Then the mother will lick the kid clean. This is important for goat bonding to start and for the kid’s own body to begin taking over.
Another important part of the mother goat cleaning their child is that they will get a lot of nutrients back from doing this. This will help the mother recover from carrying the kid and birth itself.
It’s is common practice to cut the cord and clean the goat up yourself, preventing the mother from doing these important tasks. There is a place for this. For example, if the mother goat has complications you will need to step in in order to ensure the survival of the mother and kids. However, we do not recommend this unless it is absolutely necessary. This means you need to know your goats before they give birth. Make sure they’re in a healthy state.
If you feel more comfortable just taking care of these things yourself, go for it. Keep in mind the mother-child bond if you do choose to do this. There won’t be any big repercussions from doing it yourself. We believe you should let nature handle it. To each their own though.
After the mother cleans the kid she will either be done or continue on the next birth. After she has moved on is when the kid will start to talk and stand. If the kid is still struggling to get moving after she has finished kidding the mother will come back to it and coax it into moving.
After The Goat Kids
The mother and kids will recover pretty quickly after the whole ordeal. The kids will start playing within a day. The mother goat will start grazing and resume her normal activities relatively quickly. Her kids will stay pretty close around her most of the time.
If her kids get too far away from their mother they will start to experience anxiety. This means that they will get nervous and start crying out. The mother might experience this too, it depends on the goat.
How To Handle Walking Kids
The biggest problem you will start facing when the kids start to walk is safety. Goats are curious and they love to climb things. They’re very good at climbing too. So kid-proofing you’re field, yard, pin, or wherever you will be keeping them must be of the utmost importance before the mother starts to kid.
Keep anything that the goat can get on top of far enough away from the edges of the pin that it won’t let them get over the top of the fence.
There needs to be some sort of containment to keep the goats where you want them. As you build structures to contain your standing goat kids, it is best to not use wire to separate goats from their families. This goes for separating kids from mothers and girls from boys.
Goats love to ram things. Especially if they still have their horns. If you use wire to contain your goats they will ram it quite a bit if they don’t like the pen. This will eventually cause the wire to fail and a hole will form that the goats can go through. So wire does not work well for goat confinment. It will, however, hold up just fine for baby kids, plus goats can’t climb wire.
What’s best for goat containment is wood. Building wood fences that the goats can’t get through will work wonderfully. For kids, this means that it needs to have gaps small enough that they can’t get through. That size depends on the breed of goat that you freshly standing kids are.
Another great way to contain roaming goats is with water. Goats hate wet ground and creeks. They will not go near either unless they have no choice.
So the things you need to keep in mind are that your goat kids will start standing immediately and that they will need to be properly contained beforehand. Everything else is up to you.