3 week old buckling mounting doeling

[cmjust0]

When I spoke with my vet about castrating our buckling (now a wether), he said that if the goat is prone to urinary calculi, you can cut off the tip of the penis so that the opening is a little larger. He also said to watch the phosphorus in the diet.

I could not do that...I hope you mean a vet could do it :/

Maybe it's better to wait until they're older...

Actually, yeah you could. It's not really "the tip of the penis" you're cutting off when you remove the urethral process.. A goat's urethra comes out from the penis a bit. If you've ever really watched a goat spray his legs/face/beard, you can see the urethral process in action. It's kinda like a water wiggle.. When they spray, it just sorta whirls around, getting pee all over the place. The theory is that's what it's for....and that's all it's for...spraying.

To cut one off, all you really gotta do is sit the goat upright on his butt, expose the penis by reaching down just ahead of the 'nards and pushing up while sorta pushing down on the sheath. Poof -- out comes willy.

You'll see the process clearly after that.. Pinch it between your fingers, pull it up, and sever it with an exacto/scalpel.. Or, a pocketknife. Or a pair of scissors..

Seriously, on a buck/wether the size of one most likely to get urinary calculi, the process will be maybe 1/16" in diameter. Really, really tiny. No big deal at all.

But, like I said in my earlier post...may very well not help anything, either.

 

[RockyToggRanch]

Yikes. That would be a vet call. Hope I don't have to find out. What are the signs of urinary calculi?

 

[Roll farms]

We actually did that (cut off the tip of his penis) to our last Nubian buck, Hurricane, when he was about 2 years old.
Pretty much just as CM described it.

Aside from the sigmoid, that U. process (Pizzle) is the second most likely place for a UC problem (picture a bottleneck).

At every goat crisis in our farm's history, my good vet goes out of town. F'real.

Doe trying to give birth to 2 kids at once? Dr. Pearson's gone.
Doe gets listeriosis??? Yep, she's out of town....
Buck gets UC? She's gone again....

So I call her pager on a Saturday morning when I realize Hurri has a UC issue....her associate vet calls back (whom I dislike / have no use for) and explains Dr. P is gone and says, "Well, you know I have no goat experience....call the vet in Hartford City..."

I ask her for some amm. chloride and she says they don't have any in the clinic...(I still say she was wrong, they HAD to have it on hand...
wouldn't you think???)

I ended up trying 'fruit fresh' from a grocery (read online it's similar in make up) but it didn't help fast enough to suit me.

I then ask about cutting off the U.P. and she tells me "I wouldn't advise that, the risk of him bleeding out is not worth it."

I couldn't believe my ears...we're talking a piece of flesh the size of a mouse's tail in diameter, and as long as my first knuckle on my pinkie...but he might bleed out??? AND SHE IS A VET??? Arrrrgh!

My husband was none-too-happy about the idea of cutting Hurri on his winkie to begin with, and once he heard the vet say that and says, "OK, no way, we're not doing it..."

Because Hurricane wasn't bloating in the abdominal area so much as his penis looked like a water balloon, I was sure cutting the pizzle WOULD help, in his case (and I will grant that if the blockage is higher up it probably won't do much good).

So I say, "FINE, I guess I'll go cut the whole @+*& thing off" and head off w/ a wicked looking pair of 3" long nail scissors....seriously.

My husband reluctantly follows....

He flipped him over, sat him on his bum, (at this point Hurri was so miserable he didn't CARE what we did to him.) and I quickly snipped and leaned to the side (expecting to get hit w/ a flow) and the urine just started gushing out of him.

I swear, that buck SMILED at me. He just sat there on my hubby's lap, peeing all over the both of them, looking SOOO relieved.

Never saw a drop of blood. He bred just fine for 5 more years after that.

It does depend on where the UC blockage is....it won't help to cut off the pizzle if the blockage is way up in his urethra...but if it's in the pizzle, it can be cut off....for rizzle.

 

[cmjust0]

Our little UC buck, Frank, got his pizzle snipped too. That's how I know the how/what/where of it. Saw it done, and feel 100% confident that I could do it myself if necessary.

Actually..with everything that happened..I feel pretty confident that I could provide as much front-line UC treatment for a goat as anybody. To me, that's worth Frank's vet bills.

Anyway, "mouse's tail" is dead-on accurate. It's a little nothing of a flap of nothing..

Frank's had some 'sandy' calculi in it, but not so much that pee couldn't wick its way through. Thing is, the calculi had already mascerated it to the point that it was kinda purple/black and dead looking already. So, while cutting it off didn't really do all that much good...it sure didn't hurt anything, either. He bled like three drops.

Frank's calculi was stuck in the sigmoid.

He's the only buck I know of around here who's had an obstruction in the sigmoid flexure and lived to meheheheheh about it.

He still dribbles, btw, and is definitely worse for the wear....but the complications from UC are actually seeming to get better as he grows. Some of you actually remember me talking about him last year. Haven't updated that in quite some time. I think I'll go dig that thread up and post an update to it.