Our smallest Angora goat, Evie was down on Monday – completely down, laid on her side and completely lifeless. We rang up the vet, as she had had a hernia operation earlier this year and we were pretty convinced that she had been knocked on the side and had sustained an internal injury. We thought we were taking her to be put down, as she was so lifeless. We took her in to the stable with the rabbits and I waited whilst Ian tried to track down a vet. We tried Capon Tree who are the Haltwhistle vets and the premium version. The vet was out on a call so Ian rang our other vet, Clapps, who are always very good but have less bells and whistles than Capon Tree. We have used them to put both Bernie and Tabatha to sleep as they have a much more personal touch, but do worry me from time to time saying things like – is it a goat or a sheep…
Anyway, the long and short of it is she is not injured and was just badly chilled and underweight. So she is back in the downstairs toilet. She is still in a bad way and it is probably 50/50 as to whether she is going to pull through. I knew she was being bullied and made sure she had her own food, but obviously not enough. She has now started scouring which isn’t good. We have been giving her some Effydral to keep her hydrated, and this morning I had to inject her with Dectomax. This was the first time that I have injected one of our animals and I was pretty nervous, even though Ian talked me through it over the phone. Hopefully it went into the right place Hopefully this will kill the worms that are causing the scouring. If she is still scouring tomorrow then we’ll need to get something from the vet to stop it, but he is worried about upsetting her further.
An interesting thought. We have been speaking about getting a shot gun so we can put any injured animals down immediately and not have to wait for the vet. What would we have done if we’d had a gun in this circumstance…
When I checked the little chicks last night, the little ones had not only put themselves into the shed, but had also tucked themselves away under Mummy hen, who is generally of an evil temperement and therefore they are braver than we are. It generally takes the offer of gauntlets and all over body protection before Ian will approach her. She obviously did not mind having six more little ones under her.
Tan Tans leg is getting better and will be back outside (hopefully) with no lasting damage.
Bertie and Gertie are back in the barn now, as Bertie was hobbling on two legs, hopefully he too will be back outside again soon.
Genghis is showing his displeasure about being locked away from his ladies, by doing the Herdwick ‘blugh’ as opposed to a normal sheep like baaaa. He has been advertised for sale this week so we’ll have to see whether anyone is interested…