rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Hi,
Popping in briefly before things get crazy again.
All baby goats out in the barn in a pen on a lamb bar except for one.
Trinka had one buck and three does, one doe full breach, but I was able to get it turned around. One of the girls was always a little slow on the bottle and is now refusing a bottle since disbudding Sunday and being tube fed in the house. Probably on the decline. Got her pooping, gave some selenium, still refusing bottle. That's life
Hera popped out twin bucks, one with entropion that I unrolled and kept open and he will be a wether.
Summer went into labor on the same morning as Hera and pushed for who knows how long over night because she doesn't believe in ligaments being touched when she gets close. When I found her in the morning she had a white blob poking out of her rear but it seemed to have no head, no legs attached to it no matter how far in I went, just a soft blob and I could feel it had bones. I found a foot, but it was turned completely the wrong direction to be the kid wether hind or front. So I called the vet and after he got his kids to school he came out, reached in (blob went sort of back in)...and told me all he could feel was a blob that had bones and he couldn't make heads or tails of it. Eventually he found a leg, probably the same one I found, and pulled a kid out. The kid was presenting belly first and folded in half and was double jointed/dislocated in the hip, knee, and hock of one leg, so that leg floating in space seemingly attached to nothing was probably his leg, twisted in some vulgar direction that I don't want to think about. A doe kid and another buckling followed. The double jointed kid eventually shored up, and while he's not totally normal, seems to be doing fine now on the lamb bar.

Now I'm waiting on Emmi to kid due Saturday, and also a pen bred nigerian doe I brought in that was bred to a son of a Valley's-Edge buck from RZ acres, so her kids will probably be busts on top of no due date.

Things are going okay enough though

Today I stood by the fence after bottle feeding and watched Bailey fight Riker for pig poop he wasn't interested in. Although fight would be a little bit of a generous word. I watched Bailey get really nasty and intimidating and Riker stand his ground until he lost interest. And Bailey ate a pile of pig poo-poo. Congratulations? I promise I feed that fat dog.

(adding, I bottle feed the first feeding of the day with some coccidia prevention in each bottle so each kid gets their dose and no more or no less, the rest is lamb bar feedings)
So yes, more of the same. I have pictures somewhere I will add when I get a moment.

 

[farmerjan]

No wonder you have been MIA... BUSY BUSY.

Amazing you saved the "blob" and then more behind it.... Sounds like you have had your hands... and more.... full for several weeks. Congrats on all that you have saved and for them to be doing as well as they all are...

 

[Ridgetop]

I HATE those weird presentations!!! you never know which way to push or pull! Glad you got a live normal doe and buck, and the twisted one being a buck means he can go to auction. I am amaed that as twisted as he was, he survived and you could untwist him.

 

[Baymule]

Midwife, nurse, OB, and call the vet. No offense, but this makes me love my sheep even more. I love morning surprises.

I’m amazed that you and the vet saved the blob. That’s one of those WOW moments. Then 2 more behind him, even better. Congratulations on all the kids, may the next birth be uneventful and easy.

 

[rachels.haven]

Here is a soggy Barb doggie, all grown up. @B&B Happy goats

And here is a Soggy Not Barb Doggie. He says, "I didn't play in any mud. Honest."

You DO believe me, special friend, right?

And this is the reality.They both totally played in mud this morning and will not be allowed loose in the house without a bath.

 

[Ridgetop]

It's that poodle gene. A cousin once bought a standard poodle puppy. They had a pond. The breeder told her that poodles did not like water. My cousin did not do her homework and read up on poodles - that they were originally water retrievers! You know the rest. LOL

 

[rachels.haven]

It's that poodle gene. A cousin once bought a standard poodle puppy. They had a pond. The breeder told her that poodles did not like water. My cousin did not do her homework and read up on poodles - that they were originally water retrievers! You know the rest. LOL

Yes, poodle sounds like puddle for a reason...and they do act like gun dogs, although not as gun doggy as most. If you want a clean pet toy dog, don't get a poodle.

 

[Ridgetop]

They were originally bred as German water retrievers ("Pudeln). The show clip that everyone thinks looks so silly is actually a special clip designed to leave hair on the chest to keep the lungs and heart warm, and on the hip and ankle joints to do the same for them, while removing most of the rest of the coat to allow them to swim without sinking from the weight of that heavy coat. They are not used much for hunting anymore in this country and so they are no longer bred to keep any hunting ability. They are not even classified anymore as sporting dogs. However, they are as trainable as sporting dogs and make good family house dogs since their hair coat is hypoallergenic. They are much desired as obedience trial dogs.

 

[rachels.haven]

Twin bucks for Emmi by our L*S buck Pete. Emmi is a wether doe, and here because we love her so wethered they will be.

 

[rachels.haven]

Hi!

I popped in to see how everyone is doing. I've got lots of reading to do. Good. My favorite.

God decided I was taking too long and fighting getting rid of the dwarves so we had some drama take place that has forced me to de-dwarf completely. There is not a dwarf on my property anymore.

All my goat kids went to meat buyer this year. Does, bucklings...all of it. (7 doelings and something like 25 bucklings)

The barn is more peaceful. Our hay consumption is down. I'm not going to be milking much this year even though we were testing. One doe has mastitis as a result of a sudden dry off because you can't just quit milking lamanchas. They must be walked down and I couldn't do that.

Why is all this?

About two months ago now a friend of mine and I went out to a disease tested show herd with very nice genetics that play nice with the lamanchas in both of our herds and brought home a few bred does-she got three and I got two. They were thin and a little neglected, but not horrible. The herd was big, but they had good bones. My goats kidded earlier than I expected. I was given two due dates and they apparently really took the first time around. Then my friend's goats started kidding and she put up pics of her new mommies and babies and then the messages started. In the end she was contacted by several different people letting her know that the "disease tested" and " negative" goats they got from this farm were CAE positive. This was over a weekend so quick as a flash we both drew blood on our girls and a few penmates and sent them in Monday morning to wait results on Friday. I was especially worried because one of the does from this herd was evened out and dumped on the milk line before I milked my milk strings (if memory serves). One of the does milk may have also been accidentally not dumped as is usually done and may have wound up in a lamb bar. Then I also fed colostrum to the kids of one of the suspect does then used the same bottle to feed other newborn kids. So we were set up to go into full on infection mode so I went down to milking once per day to minimize potential spread. They were still making plenty of milk to keep the bottle kids in milk.

So by midweek I was thinking all this was probably rumours by people hating on this herd. One doe was getting thinner, but I figured I could feed her back up especially if I quit milking her. The other doe was fine. Once Friday hit there was something obviously wrong with the thin doe. She was still spirited but couldn't stand for more than a few minutes and she didn't want to move. She was becoming more and more like a skeleton. She'd had a seizure (treated with CMPK paste and thiamine in case that was an issue). I was to the point I was thinking I'd walk into her dead in the barn. I was only putting her on the stand to feed her. She'd only been (hand) milked 3 times in a week just to keep her from popping, but she had very little milk. It was weird. All this she wasn't wormy and famacha was good.

So Friday around 11 we got our results back. The less thin doe that I evened out on the machine was a strong positive for CAE. The spirited skeleton doe had 0.0 antibodies but obviously was crashing. All three of the other unrelated does I put on that test were negative. The my friend that went with me to buy goats there had 2/3 of hers positive. About half an hour after I got my results my meat buyer emailed. They emailed the same time last year too. We got in touch with the seller who didn't want them back, said she didn't believe us and the goats had been shown the previous year, claimed she had negative results and could send them (still hasn't), and to destroy the goats and she'd reimburse us (still hasn't). So the meat man got the two goats from that farm, all the goat kids here, and the two does and babies from my friend's farm all for $300 all together. No, we didn't want a bargain. We wanted disease vectors gone. They didn't ask or care about disease status. Still makes me feel bad even though I know they sell them straight to their ethnic workers. I stopped milking completely then. Milk and milking are major spreaders of CAE, so dry off the milkers, slow the spread.

So I was contacted by someone I had bought a ND doe from. She said she wanted her back if I was selling down for the sake of testing simplicity even if I thought she was positive. She'd dealt with CAE before and she still loved that doe. So I offered her my whole dwarf herd for free if she came and got them asap because we had one doe that hadn't been on the milk stand with the sick does yet due on Thursday that week. The lady's eyes about fell out and she drove 8 hours all night with her friend and the pregnant doe and all the other 12 ND were gone on Monday after arranging things Sunday afternoon-THANK GOODNESS. No more dwarf drama ever now.
That Sunday night, after arranging things and before the dwarf exodus my husband and I drew blood from the remaining 19, dwarves excluded, and a whole (smaller) herd sample box was sent in for rescreening and a few preg tests. Friday came again and after being a wreck all day (my brother had heart surgery that day to boot!!!) I got our negative results. Waddl says antibodies can take up to 3 months to show up on test, so my plan is to retest every month until we have at least 4 months of negative tests. Then go down to every 3 months and stay there. We will now be a full on CAE prevention herd even if we are negative. My goat community has been very supportive. People who have worked past CAE and are now negative again have been reaching out and helping me plan and have the guts to keep going. I've been taught what I need to do and how and stuff old timers have discovered is coming to help make things easier. I've been open on my FB page about our testing and why. People would know anyway. I put the new does names on my page when I got them and this farm and this farm now after this last batch of lying has a VERY blighted name and the does had their herd name. No one wants to publicly admit they have had to deal with CAE, so I did, and I will deal with it the best I can and I will let people see how instead of sweeping it under the rug so other people can survive it too (or at least know how I failed, I guess)
If no one will buy from me in the future with years of 4x a year testing behind us and cae prevention on board...well, it appears we mostly only have bucklings as a policy anyway. Regardless, through frequent test and culling I will make sure we have no CAE postive does and we will stay on CAE prevention incase anyone we keep through the years converts later.

I also plan to go down to 10-12 does, 4-5 bucks when this is over (because I like them). I lost a really special nubian buckling I brought in and had on teh bottle in that first cull. His herd was negative, small, and perfect and I effectively ended his life through contaminated milk. His papers came today.

I feel awful about the whole thing really, but we can only live our lives forward and not backwards. (It eats me up.)

Meanwhile I have a doe due on Thursday-my first CAE prevention kidding. And pregnancy tests I snuck into the test line up reveal that two does I didn't think were bred at all were bred. So April and May kids. Males will probably be meat kids, does may be staying right here as long as my prevention program isn't compromised. Then we rest. I expect some positives to take to slaughter in my milker lineup. They just haven't shown up yet. If there aren't any, it will be a miracle. Possible, apparently it's happened before, but a miracle. I will stop holding my breath after 4 negative sets of tests. Afterward Mark recommends we only keep does I'm very excited about keeping and breeding.

So that's what I've been up to this last month. Potato.

...Gee, I wish that was more happy things up there. Basically I was crazy busy since January and then the poop hit the fan (and most of my work went down the drain and is like it never was and worse?). I am counting down the days until my next test. I NEED those four negative tests.