Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Sad News

Remember that we have 2 goats. One female and one male. We were hoping to raise babies for my daughter to show at the county fair. So the goats hang out together with the horse and have been since around November. The horse has been with the female since April last year. We think that she was going to have her babies at the end of March. Unfortunately, when I got home yesterday, the female was not happy.

My daughter and I went out to feed all of the animals and Bryan (the male) came running to the feed pen. Koda kind of came up to the fence but didn't come close. That's unusual. But even more unusual is the fact that June (the female) did not come up at all. I could hear her hollering, but normally she's almost butting us and mostly climbing up on us to get to the food. I found her in the horse run-in shed laying down in the poo. I could not convince her to get up and saw that her front leg was cut. I sent my daughter after her dad and the truck and had him help me check her out. We started to pick her up and her belly was bleeding.

We took her a couple of miles down the road to a local vet. Now you have to understand that there's not a real vet office anywhere near our house. The vet has the basics you would need for small animal issues and vaccine shots. He looked at her on the back of the truck pronounced her ok said we can't do any stitches and gave her some penicillin. He said if she didn't improve, to bring her back in the morning.

Well, she didn't improve. We got home, washed her sores the best we could and wrapped them in VetRap. I was eating supper at 9:00. We went to bed at 10:15 and I checked on her first. She wasn't moving.

The poor girl didn't make it. Since she was pregnant, neither did the babies. And there went next year's county fair. Very sad.

We are gonna try to get another adult breeding female this year.

3 comments:

Andrea said...

I am so sorry for your loss. That poor momma goat. That mus thave been horrible for her. So sad. And I am sorrry your 4-H projects are not gone. Can't you guy babies around there? I know a goat breader here that sells Boer goats for pretty inexpensive. Nice show goats. I have one of their goats, but I just play with him, we don't show. But I am sure you can find some great show goats, and if you can't, how far away are you form Louisiana? I might be able to get you a nice show goat!!

d2cmom said...

Update: We bought 2 adult and a baby nanny today. Maybe we'll have a fair goat next year! All Boer goats. I'll post pictures this week.

Unknown said...

Sorry about your momma goat! It's just awful.

looking forward to the pictures of the new additions...