Duke and Meyla

Duke and Meyla

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Blixten, Calves, and Violet

We got a Nubian buckling for St. John's Dairy on Saturday. We decided to cross breed our goats for more hardiness, but that's a story for another post. His name is Blixten, and I don't currently have any pictures of just him. 

Below, is a picture of several of the other goats at the farm. 

 
Here is Blixten himself, with all his bottle baby friends. Rosie wasn't being exactly motherly to her buck kids, so Mom just put them all on the bottle, instead of leaving her with just one kid. 
As you can see, Dove sleeps with the kids too.


Luke's heifer had a calf yesterday, and #29 had one today. They are a bull and a heifer, respectively. When I went out at eight yesterday, the heifer had two feet presenting. After two hours and no progress, Mom and I decided to assist. The calf was breach, and with a little help he came out quickly.  

 
Violet had her kids. After being in labor all day yesterday(with no pushing), Mom recruited me to "go in" and check her out. It took me nearly five minutes to get my hand inside, she was so tight, and I pretty much knew that no kid was coming out naturally. I tried anyway, though, and got the first kid's head and legs forward. (He was in total fetal position still.) After that, I was not able to do anything because it was so tight in there. I already knew the kid was dead as his eyes felt all sunken instead of slightly protruding. I just backed out, and Mom called the vet. He came out and felt for himself, then proceeded to do a cesarean. I've never seen a cesarean before, and looked forward to seeing one, however not on one of my does. I found the procedure very interesting, although very messy. He just did it in the milk stand and the milk room was a total mess when he got done with blood everywhere.
There were two kids, a buck and a doe, both dead, rotten, and with deformed heads. The vet said they were adhered to the wall of the uterus, and to remove them(or the second one for sure), he basically had to peel the uterus away from the kid.
The procedure went well, and Violet is resting now. She's in bad shape right now, however she's better than I thought she would be. It's also had to tell how much of her behavior is due to the infection, and how much is due to pain. She's nibbling at the treats of grass, raspberry, pine needles-anything I can think of-that I'm giving her, she's drinking, and she was moving around more tonight so I hope she'll be okay. She's doing much better than this morning at any rate. I'm concerned though, especially that she has very little rumen sounds. I did hear some, but very little.
So, we'll see. The vet said she has a 5-10% chance of making it, but I think her chance is quite a bit higher than that as she was already on antibiotics before this mess, because of a staph infection.


2 comments:

  1. A little help with the calf? Mom said you were pulling for all your worth I thought? Or maybe she was doing all the work. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. How about an update on Violet?

    ReplyDelete