misfitmorgan
Herd Master
I have two alpine does i can not get weight or to keep their weight over the winter. The other of the two a 4yr old alpine started losing a lot of weight late last fall, her hair lost its shine and she has bald patches now along her rump. Her sister who is 2yrs old is now starting te same trend. They almost appear as though they just got done weaning twin kids but neither have had kids in over a year now.
We have 12 goats currently total. These two are the only ones that seem to be wasting away. We have not had any new herd members the only change we made was moving to a new farm late last summer. We did separate the older alpine at feeding time when we would give her separate grain and extra rations of grain. They have a mineral block and we wormed her 3 times in the past 4 months while the other goats have gone all winter without needing to be wormed. We also gave her some bose gel. After approximately a month of extra grain she did perk up and put on a tiny bit of weight maybe 5 lbs but then stopped and seems to have lost more weight again.
We treated the entire herd with corid twice, the herd will be getting wormed this month. They have 24/7 access to good grass hay. We added clover and alfalfa hay and even second cutting to her diet to try to get more weight it did not help. She was has not gotten pregnant in over a year even though she has been with our alpine buck almost that entire time. The first and only time she kidded for us she had twins.
The only thing i can think of is possibly lack of vitamin D or something of that nature. Our goats have been locked inside the barn almost 24/7 since december until about a week ago for various reasons. Since it warmed up outside we have been leaving the barn door open during the daytime. Anyone have any ideas on what might be going on?
Also we lost her mother to similar symptoms over the summer she was however 7-8yrs old and had been bred hard before we got her so we just figured that she was just worn out from so many kids and being heavily milked in between. They had free run to be outside as much as they wanted all summer and all the grass.weeds.twigs.leaves. etc they wanted to eat on 20 acres. So i dont think that was any vitamin d deficiency.
We have 12 goats currently total. These two are the only ones that seem to be wasting away. We have not had any new herd members the only change we made was moving to a new farm late last summer. We did separate the older alpine at feeding time when we would give her separate grain and extra rations of grain. They have a mineral block and we wormed her 3 times in the past 4 months while the other goats have gone all winter without needing to be wormed. We also gave her some bose gel. After approximately a month of extra grain she did perk up and put on a tiny bit of weight maybe 5 lbs but then stopped and seems to have lost more weight again.
We treated the entire herd with corid twice, the herd will be getting wormed this month. They have 24/7 access to good grass hay. We added clover and alfalfa hay and even second cutting to her diet to try to get more weight it did not help. She was has not gotten pregnant in over a year even though she has been with our alpine buck almost that entire time. The first and only time she kidded for us she had twins.
The only thing i can think of is possibly lack of vitamin D or something of that nature. Our goats have been locked inside the barn almost 24/7 since december until about a week ago for various reasons. Since it warmed up outside we have been leaving the barn door open during the daytime. Anyone have any ideas on what might be going on?
Also we lost her mother to similar symptoms over the summer she was however 7-8yrs old and had been bred hard before we got her so we just figured that she was just worn out from so many kids and being heavily milked in between. They had free run to be outside as much as they wanted all summer and all the grass.weeds.twigs.leaves. etc they wanted to eat on 20 acres. So i dont think that was any vitamin d deficiency.