What to Expect When Your Goat Is Excepting

Each year, excited but nervous goat owners wait impatiently for their first kids. I’ve been raising goats for about four years, and I’ve been breeding for under two. Being new to goat breeding, I have a lot of insight into the fears and worries that come with kidding.

We’ve had great experiences with all of our Oberhasli does, and most of our goat births go very smoothly, requiring little, if any, human intervention. But preparation is still important, and knowing what to expect is the first step toward a happy kidding season. While each doe and birth is different, I’ve found the following guidelines to be accurate overall.

Document Your Dates

First things first: Know your breeding dates. Put your does with a buck for short periods of time, rather than keeping them together for weeks or months. This will make it easier to calculate a due date. You can drive yourself crazy waiting on a baby with an open-ended arrival time. We once acquired a doe that, unbeknownst to us or her previous owners, had accidentally been bred before we got her. We waited as weeks turned into months for her to come into heat, and finally decided to