Remember the "Green Acres" song? "Farm living is the life for me?" Let me tell you, farm life is NOT for the faint of heart.
Last night one of our baby goats broke her leg.
Now, I am all for home remedies & will attempt many 'veterinary procedures' if I think I will be successful. But the sight of that useless little leg just dangling there was too much for me. I threw all the kids in the car & took her to the vet.
He sedated her & set the leg & cast it. It was not a straight break but an angled one so that makes it harder to heal. She wears the cast for 4 weeks & Lord willing she will be healed. She seems to be doing pretty good at walking with it & her appetite is fine. Those are good signs. We are raising her to be a replacement milker & it will be a hard blow if we lose her.
We have a new bull calf we are trying to foster onto my cow. The cow is willing enough but the calf is STUPID. We have to force him to suck. Last night he head-butted me! Ouch! This morning he seemed to get the idea and he did much better. Tonight my husband will be home & it will be his job. He does much better than I at teaching them what to do.
The Biscuit is growing by leaps & bounds & is needing some supplemental bottles so we are getting a new milk goat. We went to see 2 of them the other night & milked them out to see which one we liked better. They are both super nice does & it is hard to choose between them. But the children both liked the younger one better so I think we will pick her. She's milking about a gallon a day now. We have to rearrange the barn a bit & then we will pick her up on Saturday. My daughter is quite excited to have a new goat to milk.
Sometimes after weeks like this, I think how nice it would be NOT to have all these animals & all this work & all the opportunitys for things to go wrong. But then I think: what else would I do with my time? 
Blessings.
p.s. In my last post w/ all the garden pics I forgot to give my 9 yr old daughter credit as photographer.
I hope the little goats leg heals nicely! Just my experience to share with you. We have had several with broken legs and they have always healed just fine. We have wrapped them or splinted them with some little boards or pvc pipe cut in half. They will not put weight on that leg until it is ready, they are very smart.
ReplyDeleteI have always heard that goats don't take sedation well, so glad that wasn't a problem for yours!
Actually, we had a friend experience a broken leg (on her goat), after 2 vets said to just put her down, she found one that would look at her. He set her leg and after 4 weeks they took the wrap off and the leg was still broken. They left it alone and within 2 weeks it was completely healed on its own!!! Even being set wrong for that long it healed up perfectly when left alone! Quite a story to share.
Give the little one a hug from me..........I love goats!!
Marilyn
Hey Liese, Do you have any Comfrey growing around your place? Or know of anyone who does? If so, feed her two small leaves a day, they have the most medicine possible. We did this for our 4-H lamb and he was all better in no time. Thankfully I think ours was a break straight across but we put a sock over the leg then got some insulated piping 1 1/4 inch and wrapped it with good ol' duct tape. He had his homemade cast for 2-3 weeks and it wasn't on until two weeks post break because we didn't know it was broken for two weeks, thought it was soft tissue damage. Anyway Comfrey is the ticket sister!!
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