The Trouble With Goats

Goats are interesting creatures.  Always getting into trouble.  In fact, just this morning I woke up to find Agnes, one of our goats, had gotten herself completely tangled up into some portable fencing.  I struggled for almost 10 minutes before going to get the wire cutters and destroying my fence in order to free her.  It is no wonder that in Matthew 25 our Lord separates the sheep from the goats.  A quick study of this passage shows that the goats are not the good guys.  In fact, they are told to depart to everlasting fire.  Although goats are cute, they can definitely be troublesome, and if I'm honest, sometimes I wish some of ours to be on the coals of a barbecue fire, if not everlasting fire.  

One thing that keeps us busy with goats is dealing with foot problems.  Ours are very susceptible to foot rot.  It's a condition that has us constantly trimming hooves and applying copper sulfate soaks on affected hooves.  I want to introduce you to "Bunny."  Bunny is a goat that sadly lost her baby as a stillborn this spring.  We call her Bunny due to her pink nose and striking resemblance to a bunny rabbit.

Bunny is in our goat milking stanchion for her hoof treatment.  She has an issue with her front left hoof.  We put her in the stanchion so that we might be able to isolate the hoof for treatment.  We gave ol' Bunny a cup of sweet feed to somewhat distract her from the task at hand.

I got some hoof trimmers and clipped around the affected, tender area.  There is a spot that appears to be an abscess.  It started to bleed, and I squeezed it hard to see if I could get any infection out.  Then Tricia mixed up a copper sulfate solution for soaking.  The poured it into a "hoof bath" apparatus and we set Bunny's affected hoof into the soaking solution.  I then used duct tape to secure it on her leg, so she wouldn't kick it off.

We left the boot on for 20 minutes, hoping to give the copper sulfate time to work.

We finally took the boot off.  Hopefully Bunny will improve.  If not, we're not opposed to bringing her to the veterinarian.  Bunny is not the only hoof patient at the moment.  "Tillerson," who is Tillie's little buckling was also limping.  Tricia squirted some copper sulfate into the affected hoof.  

We'll continue to watch Bunny and Tillerson for improvement and provide care to them as needed..