Ariel301
Loving the herd life
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2010
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I found one of my doelings sitting down next to the water bucket in the pen this morning. I thought she was waiting for a fresh drink, so I filled the bucket up with clean water, and she wouldn't stand up. She could not use her legs. As of 1 am last night, she was eating hay and acting fine.
I brought her up to the house and found a puncture wound on her abdomen between the rear legs. It looks to be a few days old, it is scabbed over. I can't tell how deep it is. There is a large swelling around it that seems painful when I touch it. She is pretty stiff, she can't easily open her mouth and her legs don't work right. She feels cold also. I had a neighbor who is a vet tech come over, no vet in town will treat goats. She is worried that the puncture went deep enough to enter the abdominal cavity and cause peritonitis. She gave the goat a tetanus shot and an epi shot. No feed store in town has tetanus anti-toxin and I can't get a vet to sell me any, they won't give out a medication without an examination, and they just don't do goats, plus it would cost me a couple hundred dollars for them to do an exam and say they didn't know anything. Already been there done that. Basically their advice was that it would be cheaper to shoot this one in the head and buy a new one. They're not used to dealing with purebred valuable animals, the average cost of a scrub goat here is $20. There are only two purebred breeders here...me, and my neighbor.
The goat had a slow heart beat (sped up after the epi to normal), pale gums and seems severely dehydrated. I've got her on IV fluids right now, I had the stuff on hand for that. She also got a shot of oxytetracycline. She's laying in a warm basket covered with blankets because her temperature is low, she seems comfortable most of the time, but every now and then she will cry and paddle her legs. Can I give her anything for pain? I tried to drench her with fluids and some vitamin B and electrolytes. I can force her jaws open gently, and she can swallow but it is difficult and she cries afterwards like it is painful, so I gave up on that and went to injecting instead. She's very thirsty, I tried giving her a warm bottle of milk and she wanted it, but she couldn't seem to suck it down. (She's weaned, but I find this is a great trick for getting fluids into a sick goat that was a bottle baby. They never seem to lose a love for that bottle, even my 10 year old doe loves a bottle.)
Does anyone have any advice on anything else I can do? She's an 8 month old LaMancha. She's fighting hard, but she is definitely very, very sick.
I brought her up to the house and found a puncture wound on her abdomen between the rear legs. It looks to be a few days old, it is scabbed over. I can't tell how deep it is. There is a large swelling around it that seems painful when I touch it. She is pretty stiff, she can't easily open her mouth and her legs don't work right. She feels cold also. I had a neighbor who is a vet tech come over, no vet in town will treat goats. She is worried that the puncture went deep enough to enter the abdominal cavity and cause peritonitis. She gave the goat a tetanus shot and an epi shot. No feed store in town has tetanus anti-toxin and I can't get a vet to sell me any, they won't give out a medication without an examination, and they just don't do goats, plus it would cost me a couple hundred dollars for them to do an exam and say they didn't know anything. Already been there done that. Basically their advice was that it would be cheaper to shoot this one in the head and buy a new one. They're not used to dealing with purebred valuable animals, the average cost of a scrub goat here is $20. There are only two purebred breeders here...me, and my neighbor.
The goat had a slow heart beat (sped up after the epi to normal), pale gums and seems severely dehydrated. I've got her on IV fluids right now, I had the stuff on hand for that. She also got a shot of oxytetracycline. She's laying in a warm basket covered with blankets because her temperature is low, she seems comfortable most of the time, but every now and then she will cry and paddle her legs. Can I give her anything for pain? I tried to drench her with fluids and some vitamin B and electrolytes. I can force her jaws open gently, and she can swallow but it is difficult and she cries afterwards like it is painful, so I gave up on that and went to injecting instead. She's very thirsty, I tried giving her a warm bottle of milk and she wanted it, but she couldn't seem to suck it down. (She's weaned, but I find this is a great trick for getting fluids into a sick goat that was a bottle baby. They never seem to lose a love for that bottle, even my 10 year old doe loves a bottle.)
Does anyone have any advice on anything else I can do? She's an 8 month old LaMancha. She's fighting hard, but she is definitely very, very sick.
