"You jinxed me!" she says...

[cmjust0]

So, a few weeks back I was talking to an acquaintance who owns goats about our then-current situation with bacterial scours. She said to me "What does 'scours' mean?"

I was a little surprised, but explained it to her. She went on to tell me how they didn't do squat with their goats. Like, nothing. No shots of any kind, no worming, didn't seperate bucks and does and kids so they all just interbred one another and kidded at random...

I asked if she'd ever run into any problems managing her goats that way and she said they were all just as healthy as they could be.. She actually went on to tell me how they 'baby' their goats by feeding them corn...yes, even the bucks and buck kids.

I must admit...I was a little bit aggravated. We were battling some really nasty illness even after going to great measures to make sure our goats are well kept, and here's this lady...feeding corn, never vaccinating, never worming, inbreeding, and with clearly ZERO intellectual curiosity about keeping goats....and everything's going fine for her.

Well....I ran into her again and asked "So, how are your goats?" She said "Well, I think you jinxed me!" I was like...wha? She said "Remember how I didn't know what 'scours' meant? Well, I do now. Two of ours died, and we thought another would die but it seems to be getting better. We're just hoping nobody else gets it."

I asked what they did for them, and she said they were running all over the place looking for some medication -- she didn't remember what -- that some other goat person had told her to get, and she couldn't find it. I rattled off a few meds to try and jog her memory, and she said "Maybe?" to BioMycin...as if that would have done much good anyway.

Maybe it was a bad idea, but I told her I was in the book and invited her to call if she had problems down the road. :/

 

[FarmerChick]

Any animals do fine with years of neglect in routine care---until that one day "something" goes thru the herd and kills them all dead.

All can have this good luck---until. Until it hits.

While routine care animals we still get problems, we can usually not have it go thru the herd. But when no care if given....then the whole herd is in jeopardy very quickly.

check back with these owners and see how many are still alive....or if the many times of inbreeding how many kids survive. eventually it is a waste in this situation.

but yea, some people huh? LOL

 

[cmjust0]

Yeah...my dad's always telling me about somebody he knows who keeps goats, and it's always the same story -- oh, they never have any problems!

Like, I'll tell him that we wormed or vaccinated or trimmed hooves or had to doctor a sick goat or something and he's like "Ya know, so-and-so keeps goats and I don't think they ever do any of that stuff. I reckon they just turn them out on the hill and never have any problems."...like he thinks maybe we go overboard or something.

Thing is, the guy he's talking about happens to be the same guy he told me was positively diagnosed with CHRONIC Q-FEVER last year, and who goes through a few bouts a year with a temp of like 105 for a week or so at a stretch!

I dunno, but...I'd consider q-fever a problem in my herd.

 

[FarmerChick]

yea the old wives tales of goats being difficult to kill....hmmm...that sure wasn't what I found out.

I thought they were more hardy after hearing the old timers say ya can't kill them for nothing. wow, the problems one can get without routine care is extreme I am sure. I do alot of care and I still have them croak overnight??? LOL Ugh


My father in law pulled a boner. We had about 100 goats and making money selling meat kids etc. We rarely lost any of the herd and my FIL thought, well I got 15 acres fenced just sitting----so he buys about 50 goats from auctions. OMG! He thought if he just threw some wormer at them they would be fine.....well after a time he said he couldn't handle any more kids or does to die so he took the lot back to the auction and sold off. He was surprised we kept ours alive...LOL....well, yea, I read up on HOW to keep them alive and it ain't easy..HAHA----all the time we kept saying to give CDT shots etc.....ah, na, they don't need that, we never gave them that in the olden days they did fine...etc. So in the end he lost, the goats lost and we drove ourselves insane trying to let him learn a bit...Ugh

good thing, all goats are gone and he won't be doing that again.

 

[cmjust0]

If dogs were as difficult as goats...there would be a lot more cat-people in the world.