Currently, the goat count is 108 including 30, month old babies, or kidds. We've had some warm days and really cold nights. Every night and every morning and throughout the day I monitor my goats. I stand out in the rain, snow, sunshine and wind to make sure everyone is healthy and noone is sick. It also helps me detect heats so I know when to expect babies. One afternoon a good friend of mine, Shanee, came out to see her goats. She helps me out immensely and I thought it would be a great idea to let her run goats to help pay her back. So she comes out on the weekend and visits her goats and my family pretty often. She calls the place the second chance ranch, jokingly, because almost everything I buy is starved or "organic", another term for starved. We were walking around the hay bunker area and came upon a baby shivering and frothing at the mouth. Everytime I have seen this it has always been a poisoning from some sort of plant and I have always saved them with water and pepto bismol. So I went about the normal way of treating her, 30 cc's pepto and an equal dosing of water (they dehydrate when they are poisoned which is why they can die so quickly.) The next morning I noticed she hadn't made any progress but had gotten worse. She now couldn't stand without assistance. We were in a hurry that morning, we were running late to feed cattle. I put her in the hay feeder so she wouldn't get stepped on and hurried off with my husband to feed cows. I would have plenty of time that night to take care of her.
While at Dans (husband) work I mentioned to his boss what was happening. His boss used to run thousands of sheep. He immediately knew it was pneumonia. That took my breath away. From onset, you have 72 hours before they die and we were about to go onto day 2. I went to college for two years and somehow I naively mis-diagnosed a doeling with the most obvious of symptoms. So as soon as we got home we placed her and her mother and sibling in a jug (small pen) with fresh straw. She was very weak now and her bleating was strained. Pneumonia causes sores in their lungs which in turn rupture and fill the lungs with fluids. It's very painful to the point where they typically won't lie down because the added pressure on the chest cavity is very aching. Essentially they just give up and die. The only antibiotic I had on hand was LA200. It's not a very strong one, typically used to treat footrot. It's also recommended to administer Vitamin B when you give an antibiotics. The antibiotics wipe out the good bugs in the stomach and the Vitamin B puts them back. So I administered both the LA200 and Vitamin B injections. I knew that she was hungry so I called one of the dairy goats into the barn and milked her. The doelings (pneumonia kidd) mother is a meat goat and doesn't produce as rich of milk and as much as my dairy goats do. So we tubed her the milk by sticking a 1/2 inch of an 1/8 tube down her throat and attached it to a syringe which held 30cc's of milk. Those are all the drugs I had on hand so we had to call it good and hope she could make it until I got ahold of something better.
The next morning she was flat on her side, but still alive. I administered the shot of LA200 and the vitamin B. Both shots burn. So I have to watch the very baby I am trying to save cry out in pain for about 20 seconds. I also gave her some liquid baby aspirin for the pain in her chest and congestion (at this point I was willing to try anything). I then tubed her milk and placed her back with her very worried mother. I called up the neighbor boys and asked all of them what to do in this case since I found her when she was so far gone. All suggested the drug Nuflor. It's an antibiotic specifically for respiratory problems. It's also a couple hundred dollars for a bottle of it. I'm a stay at home mom running 108 goats and operating on a very small budget right now. If I buy this drug I can't feed 20 goats their pregnant goat grain or essential nutrients. So I had to make a hard decision to bypass the nuflor in order to feed the 20 other goats. I met up with one of the boys, Cody, who had on hand Dexamethasone which is a steroid that dries up the lungs if they in fact do have pneumonia and it is a pain reliever. He gave me enough for two days. Within 4 hours she started to feel better and could almost get to her feet unassisted. I breathed a sigh of relief thinking I had beat this thing. Wrong. The next morning (8:30am) I found her once again flat on her side. I went about the usual treatment, along with the Dexamethasone. Her next checkup (2pm) she showed tremendous signs of recovery and almost shook her head in play. So I sighed a sigh of relief and put her back with her sister and mother.
Dexamethasone is a very strong steroid which can wipe out an immune system, temporarily. Something you don't want to do when you have a goat in such a frail state. So I had to stop administering it and went back to baby aspirin. She went back to being limp and acted lifeless unless I picked her up. I called my mom and asked her if she had any nuflor on hand, since they were also battling pneumonia with bummer calves. They did have some and they gave me as much as I needed. Unfortunately it was too late. I administered the Nuflor that night hoping this would fix it. The next morning I found my doeling dead on the floor, her mom standing over her. I had waited and messed around way too long. To everyone thinking the Nuflor probably killed her, I can attest it didn't.
So I disposed of the body and for the next two days was followed around by a distressed, bleating mom who made me feel about two inches tall. The cause of her pneumonia was most likely the warm days and freezing nights. We vaccinate the cattle for pneumonia using a vaccination called bovi-shield. We administer it in the fall before the temperature changes so drastically and once again when we wean since pneumonia can be brought on by stress. We have done this forever. Unfortunately I didn't think to do it to the goats.
After the doeling died I was pretty diligant about checking every single baby in the pasture, making sure they were alert and with their moms. This is the first year I have ever had solid black, super cute and very soft babies. They are my favorites hands down. To be a smart ass, I named them after our first lady and president. It makes me giggle everytime I call out Michelle and Barack. I know, I'm simple but it's still pretty funny. So one afternoon Michelle wasn't keeping up with her mother and Barack was also lacking behind her. My mom noticed them before I did and pointed it out. Now these are my favorites. So they were immediately rushed to a jug. I would have done the same had it been any other babies. So I immediately started administering Nuflor and Vitamin B, I gave Michelle only one dose of Dexamethasone and Barack wasn't sick enough to need it. Michelle had a temperature of 104 and Barack was 103.7. So they were sick. 24 hours later they were dosed again. Since the first dosing they were standing upright, their hair was shiny and fluffy and they were alert. Thank god! On the second day it became a chore to catch them for their shots. By the third it was more like a little race. I had also learned via facebook friends you can give antibiotics orally. That was just the best thing ever. No more burning the babies! By day 4 they were almost uncatchable so it was time to turn them out, but not before they were administered Nuflor orally. Today you wouldn't know they were ever sick. Yesterday they were knocking other babies off the hill and bouncing around playing. I noticed a nanny breathing a little labored and not being willing to stand a couple mornings later so she got dosed with Vitamin B, and Nuflor. The next day, she was up and about no trouble.
Realizing I had an epidemic on my hands, I invested in some Inforce 3 ($100). It is a vaccination for pneumonia that helps to vaccinate even the unborn babies. It's not a guarantee that pneumonia won't rear its ugly head but it reduces the instances of it. So the next chance I was given I called up my buddy Shanee and in the pouring down, very cold rain, we spent 3 hours vaccinating 108 head of kidds, nannies, and billies. That was 3 days ago, I haven't seen any bad side affects, I haven't seen anymore pneumonia and the barn seems to be back to normal.
So you're probably wondering the point of this story. Alot of the comments I read on the articles published mainly on the HSUS site have posters calling people like me heartless, and a monster. This is only one instance of when I had to play a vet. I'll let you be the judge on wether or not I am a monster. I spoke earlier about my feelings towards organic animals. I am going to post a couple of photos. I want you to look at the roan, red and spotted goats. In these photos I have had them over a month. You cannot find any covering over their ribs (fat or muscle), from their spine to their rib cage. One actually died from undernourishment. The big spotted on was showing signs of arthritis due to no cover being on her joints (fat/muscle) in cold weather. They have been wormed by three different wormers, I applied an insecticide pouron and had been on grain for one month in these photos. I'm also going to post photos of my goats in the same pen. Bear in mind they are different breeds, but the organic goats are barely bred and the white, with red heads (boers) are a month from kidding. If you don't know anything about livestock I hope this helped you to get a perspective about why we do what we do.
Very pregnant Washington Boer goats, all had twins.
Shanee and myself weighing a buckling to decide wether or not he is worth keeping for breeding purposes, he was.
Michelle before she got sick
Michelle, sick, day 1
Notice how you can see their spine. Can you see that in any of my other goats?
No covering and their hair is starting to show a little sheen. One month after purchasing.
One month after buying.
The drop pen. Everyone loves babies so I added some photos. Nanny on the left is pregnant with triplets.
My little girl who died of pneumonia, 3 weeks before. I also delivered her when she was born, her mother was having difficulties.
Barack and my daughter
Brownies baby, haven't named him yet.
Babies playing on the bank
Barack, Michelle and nanny. Michelle is sick and on day one in this photo
Shanee looking very excited about working goats. We all share the same enthusiasm when it's time to work up that many goats. About every 4 weeks in the winter time.
Shanees goats, Aphrodite and Tom and Jerry.
Fresh out of the oven, about 30 minutes old
No comments:
Post a Comment