# Is diarrhea a sign of labor?



## WildwoodGoats

Hello, I went out to the barn to visit my very pregnant doe has had some diarrhea. It's not pure liquid, but it's not the normal pellets either.

Is this a sign that she is close to labor, or did I maybe give her too many handfuls of sweet feed yesterday? I always give her a little treat of sweet feed when I visit her, because I am in her face all the time checking on her. I also took her on a long walk yesterday, so she got forage and plenty of hay yesterday too. 

She has loose minerals available and the only change that I have made is that I started her on Tums the day before yesterday.

I read that I can give her some water with molasses and cider vinegar to help keep her electrolytes up.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


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## KW Farms

I have seen a few does in the past get loose stools before kidding...but I wouldn't say that's very common. I'd be more inclined to think it was the sweet feed or maybe something she ate yesterday on the walk did it.


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## WildwoodGoats

Okay, thank you. Any suggestions on what to do? I'm going to lay off the sweet feed and only give her hay today.


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## Zarafia

Horses will sometimes start passing a looser stool (not actual diarhea), more frequently as they get close to foaling (within ten days) because the baby is so big, there just seems to be less room in them to hold feces. I think that the phenomenon looks like diarhea because stuff is coming out before the colon has a chance to leach the last bits of water out that it would normally do. Stuff is just getting pushed out as it gets there.
I hope that made some sense. Horses certainly aren't goats and you need to go by what the good goaters here say, but I'm betting that the same thing applies sometimes.
In horses this loose, frequent stool is not an accurate foaling predictor because it can vary depending on the position of the foal. But it usually does mean that baby (or babies!) will be there soon .
I'm going to post a thread on a question I have about predicting imminent birth. Lets see if anybody knows the answer to my question!


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