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.

Brownie (Buzz) Update

  After all the special care and consideration that our little brown lamb has been getting, we have decided he needed a less generic name than Brownie. Considering his recent run in with the electric fence and his tenacity of spirit, we have decided to change the little guy's name to Buzz.

  For the first day or two after we found him tangled in the fence, Buzz seemed to be doing ok. He started using the bandaged leg more and more. 

  His mother, Bonnie, wasn't letting him nurse as much as we'd like,  so we started putting him on Thea at milk time. It took very little encouragement for him to realize that her udder was there for the drinking and god bless Thea, she could care less what's happening to her back end when there's food in her bucket. She's an old hand at wet nursing both kids and lambs that aren't her own.

  Unfortunately, a couple days after we found Buzz tangled in the fencing, I noticed his foot was swollen. Thinking that perhaps I had put the bandage on too tight, I cut back the bottom of the wrapping waited until the next morning to see if the swelling went down.

  The following morning the foot looked the same, if not worse. We made the tough decision to separate Buzz from his mother and bring him to work with me at the vet's office on Friday. We worried that Bonnie would not accept him back if they were separated too long, but I needed to shave back the fur to see if he had a wound that was abscessing and take a couple x-rays to check for bone breaks. Both things that we are not equipped to do here on the farm.
 

 Here you can see just how swollen his foot was. Just look at the distance between the toes on each foot. Xrays showed that nothing was broken, but when we shaved down the leg, we found areas of extreme bruising and maybe even the start of gangrene in a couple of areas. There was no abscess, just lots and lots of swelling. He also had a temperature of 106 which is about 3-4 degrees above normal for a sheep. We immediately started him on antibiotics and treating with homeopathic remedies. Within about 2 hours of getting a remedy, the foot started draining and the swelling went down.

  Buzz was such a good little boy, staying in his cozy crate all day without making so much as a peep. That evening we brought him home and the second he caught sight of the pasture, he started calling to his mother. To our amazement, Bonnie started calling back. Within a few minutes, mother and son were reunited in the milk room. Bonnie was even letting the little guy nurse.

  We have the two set up in a pen now so that we can easily monitor Buzz's progress. He is far from out of the woods, but at least he is using the leg. The foot has swollen again unfortunately. For now, we will continue antibiotics and remedies. Even though Bonnie is letting him nurse, we are still letting him drink from Thea a couple times a day. We figure the little guy needs all the nutrition he can get to pull through this rough time.  

Luciano the Caprine Tripod

  Last Monday, I was heading out to do evening chores when I noticed I was short one small and slightly annoying little goat. The two kids, Amelia and Luciano, always follow me around while I'm out doing chores, but that evening I only had half of the duo haunting my steps. It was starting to get dark, so I finished putting the birds away then went in search of my sweet little Luciano. I found him laying in the middle of the pasture by himself stoutly refusing to come to me. Very weird. 

  As I walked over to him, Luch awkwardly got up on his feet, three of then anyway. He wouldn't put any weight on one of his rear legs and refused to move from the spot. I tried explaining to the little guy that he had three other legs and was, in fact, capable of moving around with said legs. He firmly disagreed and held his ground with a little, pathetic "buh buh buh" which in goat speak roughly translates to, "Nope, I'm broken and done for! Just leave me here to die!" The boy has obviously inherited his mother and half sister's flair for the dramatic. 

  

  With a sigh, I scooped up the pathetic creature and carried him inside. I examined the leg and found a good amount of heat and swelling around the right rear hock. Keeping my fingers crossed that he'd just gotten it caught in something and had a bad sprain, I started him on some homeopathic and herbal anti-inflammatories and hoped that he would get better in the next couple days. 

 By Wednesday, he'd figured out that he could move on three legs, but the leg still felt warm and swollen. He wasn't putting any weight at all on the leg. It was time to call in some professional help. My boss graciously allowed me to bring him in to work with me for an exam and xrays. Amelia came along for moral support and because these two are completely inseparable.

   They were complete angels in the car....except that Amelia somehow managed to pee all over Luciano's rear end! First order of business on arriving at the office was a quick goat bath for the boy.

 Both the kids had a great time running around the parking lot before the office opened.

 They even helped prune some of the landscaping. So helpful.

 But most of the day was spent cuddled together in a big dog crate in the back of the office. I have to say both kids took the change of pace in stride. They were very happy to come out and meet new people and dogs. They came when I called and made very few messes on the office floor. Having a pocket full of corn and frosted mini-wheats helped.

 We did have one client want to know how often we saw rabbits at our office. I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me when I told him the  pellets out in the grass came from my little goats.

  Finally, at the end of the day Luciano got x-rayed. Turned out he had a fractured tibia. You can see the crack toward the bottom right of the above picture. Best guess is he either got the leg caught in something or one of the larger goats nailed him. If that's the case, my money's on Josie for this one.

  My boss made a splint out of fiberglass casting material that we can easily remove in case it gets wet or dirty. Luciano laid on his side on the exam table like a champ while we wrapped the leg in layers of padding, attached the splint, then wrapped the whole thing up in manly blue vet wrap.

  For the next couple weeks, both kids will be living in the backyard pen to keep the little guy from further injury and to make sure that splint stays clean and dry.
  We are hoping that Luciano will start putting weight on the splinted leg soon. I've started doing some clicker training to try and encourage him to put the leg down more. We'll also need to change out the bandaging in a couple days. Hopefully, that the leg will be healed in just a few weeks so the kids can be let loose again. I miss my little "helpers" out there!

Sick Josie

  I just recently posted about how our Josie is getting very large with her pregnancy, and I want to talk about her again. The beginning of this week we had a major scare with the poor girl.

  It was Monday morning, my normal day off work, and I was out doing my chores when Gwen walked up to me asking for her breakfast. I noticed that there was something on her side. It looked kind of green and dry and crusty. I didn't think much of and went about letting out ducks and bringing feed to rabbits when I noticed Josie laying in the field. Now this is not unusual. The goats tend to laze around until they hear me open their feed bin for breakfast in the morning. What was unusual was that Josie's normally white beard looked kind of...green.

  The day before, Big Onion and I spent most of the day cutting, de-stemming, coring, grinding, and juicing all those ground fallen pears from the tree in the back yard. So that morning, I brought out all the pear cores, stems, and ground leavings for all the animals to enjoy. I offered a small handful of ground pear to Josie. Normally, she loves the pears and will scarf down any she can get her mouth on. This morning, she gave it one sniff and backed away quickly. Totally not interested.

  I shrugged and went about my day, resolving to check on her again that afternoon. Well, by the time I got back to checking on Josie again, she was looking really bad. It was now clear why Gwen was speckled with crust, and Josie had a green beard. Josie had apparently been vomiting since the night before. Now goats don't exactly vomit, not like we do. It's more like they bring their cud up into their mouths then open up and sling to glop all over the place. Trust me when I say that you do not want to be in the splash zone of a sick goat.

  That afternoon Josie had covered herself in her own sick. She was hugely pregnant, slinging cud everywhere, grinding her teeth, squatting frequently, and making these terrible little distressed goat sounds.

  I tried giving her baking soda and some cooking oil in case she was bloating. Both things seemed to make her feel worse. We were especially worried because she was so pregnant and seemed to be feeling really, really terrible. I finally called my wonderful local, large animal vet. After talking to him for a few minutes, we came to the conclusion that Josie had probably eaten too many ground fallen pears the night before and since she was so pregnant, the fermentation of the sweet fruit in her already compressed gut was making her sick. He suggested I give her a shot of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory, to help relieve some of the pain and bring her in the next morning for fluids if she hadn't improved.

   The shot seemed to help a little. Within an hour she was nibbling on some grass in the pasture and resting in the shade. That night she wasn't at all interested in eating dinner which was fine since the vet said no grains until she was feeling better, but she seemed to be feeling just ok.

  Late in the evening, I went back out to check on her and as I walked out, I heard Rocky, our buck, calling and calling. He took one look at me and ran back to where Josie was standing in the corner of the goat room. I guess he was worried about his favorite lady. Josie was back to grinding her teeth, vomiting, and making those heartbreaking little sounds. I gave her another dose of Banamine and a mouthful of Pepto bismol. I texted my boss and coworkers and said that if my goat wasn't better by morning, I was going to take her to the local vet. My boss (who is a homeopathic vet, but primarily treats small animals) texted back suggesting that I give Josie a dose of the homeopathic remedy Sepia.

   Now I don't know if it was the remedy, the pepto, or the second dose of Banamine, but by the next morning Josie was just about back to her old self. She met me at the back gate begging for breakfast. I gave her a small handful of alfalfa hay and a good grooming to clean all the sick off her coat. She had somehow gotten her cud on the BACK of her horns. Amazing.

  By that evening, it was like nothing ever happened. She was back to beating up the other goats and waddling around the pastures like the queen of the barnyard that she is. She only has about two and half weeks until she is due and already her udder is filling with milk. We'll be on kid watch very soon and until then, you can bet I'll be picking up any extra pears that come within reach of the goats.

Saving Ms. Daisy

The Big Onion and I both have "real" jobs that take us away from the farm during the day most days. The shorter days of winter often result in us not seeing our animals in the daylight for good stretches of time. Usually this is not a big deal, but on my first day off after a string of work days I saw this out in the field ...

Obvious evidence that Daisy, one of our younger ewes, had been having diarrhea. Not only did she have a dirty rear, but the she looked like she had melted. In the space of just a few days, all the weight had fallen right off her frame. Even her face looked boney and she was extremely weak. I gave her a B comp shot, a mouthful of probiotics, and got on the phone with the vet right away.

The vet suggested we run a fecal to find out exactly what was causing the diarrhea. I won't go into too much detail about how one acquires a fecal sample from a sheep. Suffice it to say gloves were involved.

The sample came back positive for coccidia and had surprisingly few worms. The vet suggested we start her on a regimin of antibiotics, propylene glycol,  and give her a dose of wormer, but he warned me that as weak as she was I shouldn't get my hopes of of saving her. They always said in vet school that "sheep are born lookin' for a place to die."

What follows was a harrowing few days of drenching this poor weak sheep with antibiotics, probiotics, vitamins, electrolytes and the propylene glycol. I also gave her double rations of grain to try and bring her weight up. I even made up a little song to the tune of Daisy Bell to try and keep both our sprits up and would sing to her while shoving various liquids down her throat...

          Daisy, Daisy, you have got runny poo

          I'm half crazy trying to save you

          It won't be an easy battle

          Because sheep are quite fragile

          But it'd be sweet

          If we could cheat

          The grim reaper of his due

I was hopeful, but tried to steel myself every time I went out into the fields to find that all our efforts had failed. Through the whole thing, she remained bright eyed and eager to gobble down any extra rations sent her way. 

It has now been a couple weeks since we first discovered the diarrhea, and I'm happy to report that Ms. Daisy is still with us. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to be putting on much weight, but at least she is feeling a lot stronger and is back to making pellets instead of cow pies.

Gwen's day out

Since she was born, Gwen has had this little cough. She aspirated fluid when she was first born and never could get totally rid of the cough. It always seems to happen after she is nursing and occasionally in the morning. Since she was fine and healthy otherwise, we kept watching and hoping it would go away. It finally made me nervous enough to pack her up and take her to visit our local large animal vet yesterday. 

 Gwen rode in the car like a champ. I just tethered her by the collar to keep her from jumping into my lap while I was driving. She walked into the vet's office on leash, got on the scale and stood still, then quietly waited with me until it was our turn. Heck, she was better behaved than most of the dogs that come into our office.

The vet gave her a thorough exam, and I am happy to report that little Gwen has been given a clean bill of health. Heart and lungs are clear. Apparently, it's pretty common for goats to carry a bug that makes them cough occasionally, but they are otherwise perfectly healthy so no reason to worry. He said that she was in great condition. He also thinks that she will stay a small goat, only around 40-50lbs.

Everyone in the vet's office just loved her. She was bright and curious and had a great time headbutting one of the receptionist's french bulldog.

Eating rocks outside the feed store.

After the vet visit, we went to the feed store. Gwen decided that the stock guy looked like a good challenge and kept headbutting him in the leg until he squatted down to pet her. It was really funny to watch people double take after thinking the little creature that was happily following me around on leash was a small dog. In the parking lot, one man actually slammed his truck to a halt, rolled down the window and yelled, "Hey! How much for the goat?"

Yeah, our Gwenny is not for sale.