Emergency Goat Surgery

It has been a tough 6 weeks here at Mountain Hollow Farm. If you’ve not read my last blog post, you can catch up here. As we were getting ready to take Grover for cremation last Monday, I noticed that one of our pregnant does, Magic, had something funky hanging out of her back end. We took her to the vet to discover she had a herniated uterus and needed emergency surgery. The left lobe of her uterus had “slipped” through a hole in her abdomen wall. The hole was a about 2.5” in diameter. The left lobe of her uterus was 3.5” to 4” in diameter and 7”-8” long. As you can imagine, the vet had a hard time putting it back in place.

After she was stitched back up, we brought Magic home. She seemed to be doing well that evening and on Tuesday. However, on Wednesday, she refused sweet feed. That is like a kid refusing candy. Hoping that it was just an upset stomach from the antibiotic and painkiller we were giving her, I gave her some probiotics. Sadly, a few hours later I found her dead. Our 3^rddead goat in 1.5 weeks.

The next day, I took her to the vet to be cremated (we don’t have a tractor to dig a hole, and I was not even going to try it by hand in our rocky soil). I did not skin her because she had a huge bald spot from being shaved for surgery so I borrowed our vet’s electric shears to harvest her fleece.

The only “good” thing about all this is that this was my first time using electric shears and it was way easier to shear a dead goat than a live one. Those shears are very sharp and it is easy to cut the skin with them.

Honestly, if this was our first year farming, I’d probably be quitting right now. However, we have done it long enough that I know this is not the norm. We have better days ahead. In fact, we will begin kidding next week or the following one. There is not much that can make you smile more than watching a bunch of energetic goat kids.