Hey fellow goat lover!
You asked for it, and I’m doing it. Goat birthing has been the most popular topic requested for my next course, so last year we videotaped every goat birth on the farm and created a course in beta with more than 80 participants. There are several lectures about birthing in the course, but the majority of the videos are live births. And the videos don’t stop with the births. There are also videos of
- kids getting started nursing
- starting kids on a bottle
- feeding with a syringe or eye dropper
- tube feeding
- disbudding
- castrating
- figuring out if kids are polled or horned
- and so much more!
For more than a decade, we’ve welcomed interns and students onto our farm to experience kidding season, but obviously most of you can’t leave your farm and travel to Illinois to do that. So, this is the next best thing. These are not like videos that you see on YouTube where someone just shows you their goat giving birth. They are minimally edited, and heavily narrated. I tell you all the things that I tell people who are here during births …
- What am I thinking about the way a doe is acting?
- How do I know she is in labor?
- Why am doing what I’m doing?
- Why am I not doing anything?
- What are our options, and what are the pros and cons of each?
- When am I worried — or not?
- How do I know the kids are okay?
- How do I know a doe is done having kids?
If you’ve ever wished that you could spend a couple of weeks with an experienced goat breeder during kidding season, this is your chance. As with all my classes, each video will have an accompanying discussion board, so you can ask questions.
Registration will be open in January 2019. To be sure you know when registration opens, provide your name and email address below.
What do current students say about the course?
This course, experienced at my own pace, has been invaluable in giving me more confidence going forward with our own home dairy. Deborah’s explanations of what the audience is seeing puts everything into perspective. There are complications of birth and raising kids that I hope to never experience, but seeing them through Deborah’s eyes first will hopefully fortify me if necessary. Thank you!
The secondhand experience makes me feel like I know a little bit more! I think some of the longer clips of “nothing really happening” and the time stamps are great for letting people feel that it’s okay to be watching and waiting for a while as long as there’s progress. And watching a bottle baby absolutely refuse to eat — I would have had no idea and would have flipped out a little if I’d experience that for the first time without seeing it happen to you!
