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There are so many times you wish you had the camera, but of course, you never do. If I could just stand, I still could not capture all the joy these little guys give us. However, we do want to pay tribute to those we've lot along the way. But we don't want you to think there's only sad times, so I will be adding (as time allows) happy pictures too - the ones we could get, of course.
In Loving Memory
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Little Bit 01/05/08 to 08/06/08 |
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Little Bit was our first experience with having babies born on our farm. From the beginning, there was something a little bit different about her. According to the ultrasound that was taken prior to her mama moving to our farm, there was supposed to be triplets. However, we only got Little Bit. Since she was our first experience with goats, we didn't realize she was sorta slow until we started having other kids. Even her horn buds didn't appear until about 4 or 5 weeks. As she continued to grow, we noticed that she had a problem with falling down, even seizing up at times. Again, new to goats, we didn't know this was a sign of having a myotonic gene in her. I guess you could say she was a fainting goat. Is there such a thing as a part fainting goat, or just a little bit fainter? Do fainting goats have different levels of "fainting"? If so, that would be her. She would run and fall over; she would get excited at the food trough and fall over; she would get pushed down, and fall over. Not all the time, just sometimes. Over the seven months we had her, she grew to be a really spoiled little gal both because she was special and because she was the firstborn. One morning she woke up blind. No previous symptoms, but we later learned she probably had goat polio (this can be brought on by many simple things, but a deficiency in Vitamin B can be a cause of goat polio). Away to the vet we went. Since Little Bit had never been in a carrier before, never been away from her mama before and because she was blind and really couldn't tell what was going on, she screamed the whole way there, screamed while we waited our turn (they put us in the farthest room away from everybody). He really didn't know much about goats, but gave her a shot and sent her home. On the way home she finally stopped screaming. In fact, she became catatonic. After a short period of time, she went into convulsions. Her fever was higher than 107.7 degrees (the limit on our thermometer). We tried getting the temperature down, but to no avail. She died a short time later. Whether it was from the goat polio or from anaphylactic shock, we don't know. We do know that it was a hard lesson to learn over something that we possibly could have prevented, but lessons learned usually come the hard way. It is likely one we will not forget. We miss you, baby girl! |
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Cashew 03/21/09 (stillborn) |
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Cashew never got to spend time with us. She was stillborn. Her mama Minxy tried to have
her naturally but after seeing that she was not able to, we attempted to retrieve her. She was
malpositioned with a front leg and a back leg trying to come out at the same time. After what
seemed like forever (and I'm not even really sure how long it was), we finally got Cashew out
but she was lifeless. No amount of resuscitation helped.
She was second in line as a set of twins. Her sister Peanut still lives with us and is another one of our spoiled rotten kids. But she has an excuse since she lost her sister, we felt we needed to compensate. Pictured is Mama Minxy and sister Peanut. We have not pictures of Cashew. Cashew, we are so sorry we didn't get to know you. |
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Suzy Q 07/13/07 to 12/14/09 |
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When Suzy Q ate supper around 4:30 or 5 pm, she ate just like every one else did.
But around 6:30 pm, I noticed that she was drooling excessively. We rushed her to
the local vet who determined, through x-rays, that she had a set of triplets growing in
her and had probably developed pregnancy toxemia. Called her Fertile Myrtle. She
sent us home with medicines to use and get her started on rehydrating her. Sitting
with her through the extremely cold, miserable, long night we realized she also had
listeria. By Saturday morning, we also realized that if we wanted her to survive, we
had to do something and really quickly. After talking with several goat friends, we
rushed her on to Missouri University at Columbia School of Veterinary Services, who
worked diligently to save her. By this point in time, she had listeriosis, pregnancy
toxemia, ketosis and pneumonia (probably because we were trying to drench her with
a paralyzed head - jaw, ear, throat, her eyelid didn't even blink). After several days
of trying to save her life, it was determined that she needed to have a c-section
because the babies were pulling too much from her and were probably dead anyway.
Sadly, Suzy Q died during the surgery, but all three baby boys were indeed alive.
These are our first bottle babies and they've really been quite the experience. In our
family, we have this joke about my brother being the special one because he was
born at the hospital. Well, these are our special hospital crew at our farm - so far -
and I hope we don't have another one either!
Suzy Q, we really miss you here! But we're trying to raise your babies so that you would be proud of them. |
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Tiny Tim 12/04/09 to 01/22/10 |
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Tiny Tim was born first as a set of triplets. His legs had contracted tendons. After consulting with our goat friends, we splinted him, gave him BoSe and was told up front that he might not make it. Well, he became another one of our bottle babies. I noticed that at first he was the first one to mama to nurse but as the days grew colder, he got slower. His brother and sister got there first and mama was done with nursing by the time he got there. Since we already had four in the house, what was one more? So, in the house he came. On one of our warmer spells, we took the bottle babies outside to play and noticed that Tiny appeared to run out of steam in about three minutes. He fell a lot, his front legs giving out on him quickly. We decided it was time for professional advise and took him to Missouri University also. After taking x-rays, it was determined that he had congenital bone defects either because of the contracted tendons or could have been born that way, but he had already encountered stress fractures on one of his knees. He would likely get arthritis within a year or two. He would not be useable for breeding, nor would he ever get to run and play with the other goats in the herd. Although it was an extremely tough decision on our part, we felt we owed it to Tiny to let him go. Another one of our special kids, so this one was really hard to let go. We love you and miss you too! |