Goats are fabulous creatures. From their square pupils to their abnormal pregnancies. One of these oddities has been referred to as “bagging up”.
Bagging up is a term referring to the enlarging of a goat’s udders, nipples, and mammary glands. A goat bags up when it is getting close to kidding (giving birth). Bagging up occurs due to the way goat pregnancy hormones interact.
Why Goats Bag Up
All mammals feed their young by providing them with nutrients through milk. All mammals have a slightly different way of doing this though. The idea stays the same though. The young need milk, so milk is provided.
Most mammals that walk don’t have breasts all the time. That’s basically just humans. Other walking mammals have to undergo the swelling of mammary glands, ducts, udders, and nipples every time they are pregnant.
So really, a goat doing this is pretty normal for the kind of animal they are. Even humans do this to an extent. It’s not as exaggerated, but it still happens.
It is triggered by a combination of hormones: Estrogen, Progesterone, and Prolactin. After a goat gets pregnant these hormones start being produced in a way that causes the enlargement of the udder and the production of milk.
Basically, a goat, like any other mammal feeds her young by providing milk, and that requires the tissues, glands, and ducts to be prepared for milk production.
Long story short, goats bag up because they get pregnant and need to feed their kid. A goat bagging up though doesn’t necessarily mean she is ready to kid. We’ll discuss that a little later, but a goat might not even bag up until she has already had her offspring.
Signs Of Pregnancy
Goat pregnancies last about 140-150 days. That math equals about 5 months. We’re not going to talk about how the kid develops here, just the signs of pregnancy in a goat, mostly the signs that she shows within one month of kidding.
People often assume that a goat bags up first. It’s the most obvious sign so it’s what people look for. Bagging up is a very unreliable way of checking to see if a goat is pregnant.
Goats will exhibit a couple of behaviors when they get pregnant.
Goats will become restless. Uncomfortable is probably the better term for this. They will stand up, lay down, stand up, lay down. Move around and try getting comfortable again. They’ll repeat this more and more as their due date approaches.
Another thing goats will do is show signs of nesting. This is the behavior of trying to build a safe and comfortable area to birth in. This means they’ll paw at the ground, lay down, stand up, then do it again. Normally this happens away from the herd. She might even start talking to her stomach.
The last sign that she will kid soon is her size. This can be a little unreliable, but normally big goats will show an enlarged stomach about one month before the birth. Small goats will show sooner, but the point is that a goat’s stomach has swollen keep an eye out.
Now, there is a caveat to this. If your goat is a dairy goat then it might exhibit these behaviors even if it is not pregnant. This is called a cloudburst. If your goat is a dairy goat then there won’t be any bagging up because its udders never shrunk after feeding her young.
Lastly, as your goat gets close to kidding her behavior will change. It may be drastic, it may be mild. But the behavior will change.
Identifying A Goat Ready To Kid
All of those signs are good estimates for about a month out. Let’s talk about a few days before.
This is when you will really notice a goat bagging up. Her udders will get tight, shiny, and large. There are three other sure-fire ways of knowing when a goat will kid.
The first is the enlargement of the tail area. These will swell up very big and open. This happens when she is very close to giving birth. It’s caused by hormones and is an effort to give the mom and kid as easy of an experience as possible.
The second is the loss of ligaments. A goat’s hips ligaments will become incredibly soft and loose twelve to twenty-four hours before she gives birth. There is a bit of know-how in figuring this out.
The tail section of the goat is where you’ll be feeling. You’ll put your fingers on both sides of the tails and run them down to the bottom of the tail. The ligaments will be bumps. The harder the bumps are the farther away your goats are from kidding.
That being said, it doesn’t take much time for the ligaments to vanish. So check them at least twice a day.
The last sign is the loss of a mucus plug. This will come out within minutes of a goat giving birth. At this point the kid is imminent
At this point, your goat has most likely bagged up, but it’s not a guarantee. The issue with using bagging up as a gauge of pregnancy and birth is that all goats are different.
Variations Of Bagging Up
A goat will bag up at different times and in different ways based on a few factors. The first of which depends on how many times your goat has been pregnant.
If this is the first time a goat has been pregnant, bagging up will start very early and go very slowly. This means that the udders, or the nipples, or both will start growing, but over the course of months. And she won’t truly bag up until a few days before she kids. Whereas a goat that has been pregnant a few times will bag up very suddenly.
If a goat has been pregnant before she will bag up fully and suddenly a whole month before she kids. But she may not be fully bagged (that is ready to nurse) until she has her young.
The baseline is, bagging up is exciting because it’s an easy way to tell if your goat is pregnant. It isn’t an accurate measure of how far along your goat is. Remember, goats bag up because they are pregnant and getting ready to nurse their young.