Gertrude

  Last Sunday morning after chores were done, Big Onion and I took a walk to the back pasture to take Rialey swimming in the pond. As usual we were accompanied by the entire herd of goats. That morning, I asked Big Onion to check Gertie's color. There was nothing tangibly wrong with her, but she just didn't seem right. He did a quick check of the mucus membranes around her eyes and said she looked normal.

  That evening when milking time came around, I gave my usual call of "Ladies!" and all the girls piled into the milk room as normal. Although Gertie was doing her usual jostling with the other girls and reasserting her place as one of our top herd goats, there was obviously something wrong. She had foam around her lips and nose. She was grinding her teeth and moaning a little. There were no signs that she had been vomiting or having diarrhea, but the girl was certainly in some kind of pain.

  She still wanted to eat, so I offered her just a handful of hay. She would try to eat it then go back to grinding and foaming and wiping her face on every available surface: her feed bucket, the walls, her daughter Eve's back. After milking, we tried our best to get a look into her mouth to make sure something wasn't stuck somewhere or that she hadn't broken a tooth. We had a heck of a time getting her mouth open, but once we did, everything looked normal.

  We gave her a dose of banamine for pain, some baking soda and oil in case she was bloating, and a couple of charcoal pills on the off chance that she had eaten something toxic. We gave the rest of the herd a second look over, but no one else seemed to be having any problems. That night we closed Gertie and Eve into the goat yard so no one would bother them with fresh hay and a bucket of clean water and went to bed.

  Early the next morning Big Onion left for work and I threw on my closes from the day before and ran out expecting to find Gert back to her usual self. Instead I found her laid out in the dirt of the goat yard looking terrified and unable to get up. I called the vet and asked them to please come out to the farm as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the only available vet was already on another farm call and wouldn't be free for a couple of hours. My only other option was to try and bring the goat to the vet's office.

  I should mention here that Gertie is our biggest and heaviest goat by far. She's actually the biggest animal we have here on the farm weighing in at at least 150-175lbs. Loading her into the back of my car on my own seemed almost impossible, but it had to be done. I grabbed an xpen and some hay quickly and set up the back of my car for livestock transport. I pulled the car into the pasture and backed right up to the goat yard. Luckily, I was able to get Gertie back on her feet and walk/drag her to my waiting vehicle. I managed to get her loaded by lifting one front foot at a time onto the tailgate then heaving her back end up and in.

  Once in the car, she fell over again and would not get back up. She was in distress and moaning the whole way to the vet's office. I actually had to pull over at one point during the short trip to put her in a better position and make sure she could breath ok.

  When we arrived at the vet's office, we tipped her out of the car and onto her feet. He gave her a thorough exam and decided to pass a tube from her mouth into her stomach and treat Gertie for possible bloat. This was easier said than done has she had clamped her mouth so tightly shut that it took three of us and a pry bar to get her mouth open enough to get the tube in place. In the process, the poor girl bit her tongue rather badly. Ouch!

  The vet filled her belly with bloat medication, and we waited and watched her for a bit. Gertie seemed to be improving a little. We loaded her back into my car and I took her home again. On the way home, she collapsed in the car and was making distressed sounds again.

  Once home, I got her out of the car and back on her feet. We walked back into the milk room where she seemed to be ok for the time being. I gave her another dose of banamine for pain and went about the normal business of feeding animals and milking the other goats then went inside for some breakfast/lunch.

  When I went back out to check on Gertie she was once again laid out on her side. Her gut was full of air, her legs were rigid, and she was very upset. By sheer force of will, I got her back up on her feet and massaged the air out of her rumen. I spent the rest of the day in that room with her. She would have these terrible spasms and fall over with her back legs thrown straight backward. I assumed she was having painful stomach cramps. Over and over, I got her back on her feet because if I left her laying down her gut would just fill with air. I ended up sitting on a stool with her leaning into me for most of the day. I gave her more oil to try and combat the gas formation and aloe to soothe her stomach. Nothing seemed to help at all.

  She just kept getting worse and worse. Big Onion got home and did all the farm chores while I stayed in that room tending to a very sick Gertie. Once chores were done, Big Onion took over sitting with her propped against him and constant massaged the air out of her gut. As the sun set, she started tilting her head to one side, and the muscle spasms started to get worse. Her entire back was bowed up, and she could not seem to relax it all all. Big Onion brought up the idea of tetanus and I got the vet on the phone at home to discuss the it as a possibility. He seemed reluctant to agree to the idea, but recommended couple treatments that might help her. He also said that if she had tetanus, we would have probably found a wound of some kind that looked nasty and infected. I thought back to a couple weeks before when we had pulled a small piece of metal out of her hoof, but I had checked that hoof since and it was fine.

  We gave her the treatments. At that point, we could no longer keep her on her feet, so we laid her down with her head propped as best we could and made a quick run out for some fast food. It just happened to be the date of our first wedding anniversary so our planned fancy dinner got downgraded to the local Taco Bell drive-thru with me still wearing yesterday's clothes and neither of us smelling none too pleasant.

  A couple hours after the treatments she was showing no signs of improving. She was in pain and scared and exhausted so we made the decision to put her out of her misery. We'd tried everything we could and we could not let this sweet girl suffer anymore. It was while she was laying there that I found the wound. On the point of her sternum, right between her front legs there was a wound the size of a nickle. It looked like a deep puncture and was obviously infected. It probably happened when Gertie hopped one of our fences some time in the last couple weeks. For a rather short and heavily built goat, she was rather good at going over fences.

  I talked to the large animal vet the next morning and we are pretty certain that it was tetanus at this point. The sad and frustrating thing is that this is preventable. There is a vaccine to guard against tetanus that we actually have in our refrigerator right now. We bought it several weeks ago and had not gotten around to giving it to everyone. I guess this is just another lesson that the farm had to teach us the hard way. When it comes to the health of the animals, there is no putting things off until tomorrow.

   Our neighbor was kind enough to come with a backhoe to dig a hole on the hillside of the first pasture so that she could be buried here on the farm. I like to think she is still up on that hill watching over her daughter, Eve who is due to have kids of her own this winter.

  We will miss our sweet Gertrude. She was a headstrong, bossy goat who was always so sweet and loving with us and everyone who visited. She looked like an old dumpy lady with a saggy udder and paunchy sides, but she carried herself like the queen of the herd. She loved to have her neck scratched and liked to stand with her  head pressed into you for attention, the goat equivalent of a hug.


Rest in peace Gertie. We are so sorry.

Gimli and Gertie tango

  After he had spent his week in quarantine, it was time to let Gimli out to meet the girls. I let him out of his backyard pen and walked him out to the goat yard where all the goats had just finished breakfast. That crazy boy took one look at the lady goats and made a beeline for Gertie, the biggest, gnarliest, oldest gal we have out there.

  It was love at first sight! Snorting, whooping, peeing, humping, tongue waggling, bug-eyed love. Goat boys are truly ridiculous in their courting rituals.

  Those two started circling like a top, Gimli trying his best to get to Gert's -ahem- business end, and Gertie doing her best to thwart him. And thwart him she did. That girl has obviously been around the block more than once.

 I was busy taking pictures and when I lowered the camera I realized we were surrounded by every other goat in the herd. All this foolishness attracted quite the crowd.

  Amelia even secured herself a front row seat and got comfortable. I tried calling her a pervert, but she didn't seem to care.

  Eve, on the other hand, seemed slightly perturbed at having to watch her mother being courted so lewdly. She eventually pinned her back and walked away saying, "Mom! Ewww!!"

  After about 10 minutes of circling, Gertie decided she had had it, hooked her horn in Gimli's collar, and held him there until he agreed to settle down. I assure you this was no accident. I've seem Gertie use this tactic on Eve when she was young and being too rambunctious. Gert is not a dumb goat.

  The hanging seemed to snapped some sense into Gimli because he stopped chasing tail for long enough to pee all over himself and run around sniffing every other girl in the place, all the while making silly whooping and spitting sounds. I'm telling you, goat boys are ridiculous.

  After watching all that craziness with Gertie, I decided to do something about Gimli's horns before he put someone's eye out. They turn straight out the side and are rather pointy. I didn't have any tools out with me so I improvised some padding using wadded up paper towels and guerrilla tape. This has actually held up really well.

  Gimli never did succeed in wooing Gertie that day. Hopefully he will have better luck with the other ladies!

 

On backs and lambs and crazy goat boys

  One of the things you learn from farming is not to take anything for granted, especially if that thing is your health. I've been having some back pain the last few days and although it's not terrible, it is enough to keep me from doing things in my normal way.

  This morning one of the lambs died. We knew this lamb had been having problems for a while now. We kept seeing her with the dirty rear that usually means diarrhea in sheep. We'd thrown three different types of dewormers at her with no success. Big Onion actually had his hand on her yesterday, and while she was low in weight, she was by no means emaciated. Her mucus membranes weren't even pale. The next step was going to be antibiotics, but I guess the crazy heat we had yesterday was too much for her. I found her body this morning near the bridge as I was putting Rocky out for the day.

 
  What should have been an easy job of collecting and disposing of the body turned into a whole ordeal involving a garden cart, the four wheeler, and one very brave dog. You see, on top of my having back issues, Rocky is in rut. This makes him just about impossible to deal with. He actually caught me with a horn while I was inspecting the dead body. I'll be honest, he's lucky my back isn't 100% or he probably would have joined that lamb in the afterlife pretty quickly after that.

 Luckily, I have Luna around to protect me from girl crazy goats boys. I had to have Luna chase Rocky away from the gate and hold him on the other side of the bridge so that I could safely bring in the 4 wheeler with the garden cart in tow. This took some convincing on my part as Luna was much more concerned about the dead lamb than the crazy goat.

 Eventually with her help, I was able to get the body bagged and loaded up without having to physically carry it more than the foot or so onto the cart.

Unfortunately, things did not go completely smoothly. While I was trying to wrestle the gate closed, Rocky saw an opening and b-lined it for the unsuspecting goat ladies grazing nearby. He was singing and snorting and prancing around like a fool. Girls! GIRLS!! Thank goodness he decided to go for Gertie because that old broad can take care of herself. She saw him coming and took off.

  When she circled around to give him a taste of her horns I was able to snag his collar and get him headed back onto the bridge. Gert followed right along behind us. I figured maybe she was actually interested in spending some quality time with that crazy dude so I put her on the bridge with Rocky.

  After a couple of chases back and forth Gert decided she'd had enough and nailed Rocky to the railing with her horns. I figured it was time to break up this love fest and moved Gertie safely back on my side of the gate.

Here's a video of Rocky being ridiculous just after losing his chance at love:

You'll want your sound turned on for this one, trust me.

I think that was quite enough farm-related adventure for me for the day. I think I'll be spending the afternoon inside.

Rabbit-topia

 The last litter of bunnies is getting bigger by the minute. Our two does, Clover and Zinny, finally have this mothering thing down. We ended up with litters of 8 and 9 from the two girls. Our rabbit tractors (mobile cages) just weren't built with those numbers in mind, so we decided to circle them with a bunch of x-pens and set up what I like to call Rabbit-topia. It's a big open fenced in area where the bunnies can run around and nibble at grass all day. They get tucked safely back into their tractors every night.

 It's so nice to watch the bunnies getting a chance to act like bunnies instead of being confined to a tiny cage with a wire floor for the entirety of their 12 week existence. They run around and bounce and play with each other all day. They are much calmer and more curious about the world around them as well.

  With so many rabbits in one area, the fencing gets moved just about every day. As you can see in this pic, the chickens are very helpful in scratching at any piled up dropping to spread them and help fertilize the pasture.

  The only problem we've run into with this system is the goats. Of course they are curious about this new thing in their field. I've actually gone out more than once to find Josie IN the enclosure. Once she had bent the fencing, and there were escaped bunnies everywhere. I'm sure the neighbors got a chuckle out of watching me round up 10+ bunnies on the loose, but I managed it somehow.

 The most recent time Josie pushed her way into the bunny area, she was so mad that she couldn't get back out that I found her flipping bunnies with her horns. Not trying to hurt them, just venting her frustrations in some bizarro retelling of Little Bunny Foo Foo by scooping each bunny with her horns and tossing it onto it's back.

  Every morning the rabbits get a buffet style breakfast of pellets and alfalfa. From this group, we will probably pick out one more breeder doe, bringing out total to four.

  Right now we are doing some research on keeping our breeding females in a colony style setup on the group that would look similar to the setup above. The only big difference is that does like to dig burrows, so we will have to find a way to keep them from digging into the ground. With the high water table in this area, bunnies born underground would surely drown with the slightest rain.

Until then, we'll keep doing what we can to make sure our bunnies lead a happy life.

Goat heaven

 Look who I found out in the back pasture all by themselves for the first time! All 6 goats have finally decided to take advantage of the massive amounts of brush out in the third pasture. Up until now, the girls would follow us out there but would not stay out there unless we were there working on something. The minute we headed back up front they would hightail it across the bridge back to the barnyard area.

 Josie and Jenni in goat heaven.

Jenni, who has an advanced case of the arthritic form of CAE, got a big dose of Banamine today. It was nice to see her walking almost like a normal goat and out grazing with the rest of the group.

 I suspect we will have a much smaller blackberry harvest this year thanks to these girls.

Unfortunately, goats love blackberry bushes. The girls were very happily chomping away at any hope of a future berry harvest. Oh well!

Gertrude and Eve - Rescue Goats

A few weeks ago, we got a message asking if we would be interested in taking in a rescue goat. Apparently this female goat was found swimming around a flooded area during Isaac and was being kept at a public barn south of New Orleans. Not long after she was rescued, she gave birth to a set of twins, a male and a female. 

Today we picked up Gertrude and Eve, mother and daughter.  Gertie looks like a much older goat than our adult girls. One side of her udder is completely died up. The other is so long it almost drags the ground. Both sides look like kids have been chewing on them for years, lots of scar tissue.

Eve is about 2 months old and is already almost totally weaned. The male kid, Wall-e, will be going to another farm to act as a companion to an older pygmy female.

 Gertie was very nervous in the car at first, but eventually settled down in the back with her little girl.

 We think she is a Nubian/Boer mix.

And we are really not sure what Eve is going to turn out to be, but she is sweet, friendly, and feels soft as a puppy.

I'd be happy to hear from any of you goat folks out there if you have any breed suggestions.

When we got home, we let Gwen into the yard to meet the new arrivals. Gertrude was not very interested as long as Gwen didn't come anywhere near her udder.

Little Eve and Gwen greeted each other with lots of sniffs. We are hoping that Eve will be a good playmate and friend for our Gwenny.

 Thea and Hunter also came running up to the fence to meet the new goats.

Before long everyone was happily chowing down together.

Before we put the new goats into their backyard pen for the night, we did put Gertie on the milk stand. She was a little nervous and kicky at first on the stand, but before long she settled down to chowing on feed and letting me get down to the business of cleaning (and cleaning and cleaning) and milking the one good side of her udder. We only got about a cup of milk so it may not be worth trying to milk her right now. We'll see once her baby stops nursing entirely if her output improves.

Either way, we are very excited about the newest additions to our herd.