Preparing for Kidding Season

The snow is falling, and the temperatures have dropped at the farm, which means one thing: kidding season is ramping up.

After last year’s chaos of kidding out 30 does in a two-week span, we decided to lighten the load this year by spreading our season out over a couple of months.

While we already have some kids on the ground, the large majority is still to come—and with it, our excitement. It’s always exciting to start imagining what animals may belong in our show string and which ones may be sale worthy to pass our genetics on to other breeders and those just getting started in the industry.

With your herd possibly doubling in size during kidding season, it’s important to have things squared away before the kids start hitting the ground.

Here’s how we prepare for the arrival of the kids.

Clean and Tidy Up for Kidding Season

If you’re anything like us, your kidding season runs into show season and things go unchecked until the next kidding season. We use the lull between shows and when kids hit the ground to do a deep clean in our kidding barn. We scrape indoor pens and strip outdoor pens to ensure we’re starting with a clean slate—it’s one of the more disgusting yet satisfying jobs.

Next, we do a thorough clean on the feed shed. We don’t know about you, but somehow it feels like our feed shed continually gets smaller, so we like to organize it to ensure we have the space to store all of the essentials (scroll to see what those are).

Check Your Equipment

Heat lamps, feeders, buckets, waterers, hoses, tank heaters, gates, doors—you name it, we check it. Once the kids start hitting the ground and the weather turns cold, the last thing we want is to hit a snag that prevents us from getting the necessities to the animals as fast as possible.

We test anything that runs on electricity, like heat lamps and tank heaters. Have you ever needed a heat lamp in the middle of the night and you keep grabbing lamps that are burnt out? Yeah, it’s pretty annoying, so this step helps prevent that.

We check feeders, buckets and waterers for cracks and holes—if they have cracks or holes, we either patch or replace the item. Lastly, we examine the gates and doors in our kidding pens to ensure they close and latch properly.

Prepare the Does

We ensure our heavy bred does are ready to kid out by giving shots, trimming feet, and inspecting them to gain an understanding of their overall health. About a week before does are scheduled to kid out, we bring them up to the kidding barn/pen. As we move them in, we’ll process each doe, giving a booster for CD&T, a shot of wormer, trim feet, and inspect for any signs of pregnancy toxemia or other disease or pregnancy complication.

Stock the Veterinary Kit

Restocking the veterinary kit can be a lifesaver—literally. Stocking your kit with the proper needles, syringes, vaccines, medicines, disinfectants, ointments, drenches and equipment ensures all the medical essentials are handy when they’re needed in an emergency.

Here’s what we keep in our kit:

• 16-gauge needles

• 3 mL syringes

• Drench syringe

• Suture kit

• Vet wrap

• Gauze

• Nitrile gloves

• Hand sanitizer

• Banamine

• Draxxin

• Dectomax

• SpectoGard Scour Chek

• Vetricyn

• Iodine

Our Essential Items for Kidding Season

While we have MANY essential items—feed, water, shavings and bedding, veterinary supplies, and so much more—here are a few additional items that you may want to consider.

Heat Lamp Barrels

Heat lamps are great for keeping kids warm, but they can also pose a threat for safety. Heat lamp barrels not only allow the heat to build up in a smaller area—thus keeping the kids warmer—but they can also be built with safter measures in place. Check out this video on building heat lamp barrels with safety top-of-mind.

Stall Refresher

The key to keeping kids happy, healthy and comfortable is keeping pens as clean as possible. Putting down stall refresher under bedding (like shavings) will help keep ammonia odors at bay.

Nutri-Drench

Nutri-Drench acts as a way to kick-start kicks—it works wonders for the kids that may be having some trouble getting up and around. As a general rule-of-thumb, we give two pumps of Nutri-Drench to every kid to ensure they start off on the right foot.

Iodine

Dipping kids’ umbilical cords in iodine helps prevent navel infection. It also acts as a good disinfectant for any other open wounds that may present during or after the kidding process. While navel infection is rare on our farm, it’s an easy preventative measure to employ.