How can you tell if a goat is pregnant? It is actually much harder that it seems.
A few years ago we had a lamancha doe bred (or so we thought…). A few months went by, and as we got closer and closer to the due date we started observing signs of the birth approaching. The doe started coming into milk, she looked much bigger in the belly section…
But the due date came and went with no kids…
Something was wrong. We had the vet come out and check her. The vet felt the does belly, said it seemed like she was pregnant… The vet even tried to induce labor. NOTHING.
The breeding didn’t take.
Months of excited waiting all for a big let down (well, not actually a big milk let down…)
It is easy to check and see if your goat is pregnant.
While it is hard to tell just by looking and feeling an animal, a goat pregnancy test can be performed to give you conclusive results.
To perform a goat pregnancy blood test you will need
- Vacutainer tubes
- 3 ml syringes with 3/4-inch 20-gauge needles
- livestock clippers (for shaving hair to expose the jugular)
- a marker (to label your blood samples)
- a lab selected to ship samples to
To take a goat blood sample for a pregnancy test your best best is to get blood from the jugular vein. You can find the vein located on the neck by shaving the hair on the neck, turning the goats head 30 degrees to the side, and placing your finger on the neck, feeling for the vein running down the goats neck.
Apply pressure to the vein to make it stick out a bit more.
Once the vein is easy to identify, insert the syringe and then attach the vacutainer to the syringe. Once the vacutainer is connected the blood with begin filling the container. Once the container is filled you can remove the vacutainer and syringe from the goat, label the tube results, and ship them off to be tested.
In just a few days you will have the results back!
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