When I was doing large animal work in West Virginia, I had a farmer call with a cow problem. He kept saying, "she has mastatitis in her titty." I'm sure it was somewhat embarrassing for an older male farmer to try to describe things to a young female vet, but this one still makes me laugh with I think about it.
And what made me think about it was a goat with mastitis. It started about 3 weeks ago. We got her up and treated her for a week. She felt better but that side is now swollen and hard. At least it's not painful anymore. We were hoping that she would just have a single, but no luck there, triplets.
And no way is something going to nurse from that even if it had milk. We ended up taking her to the barn where we could keep a better watch on things. Fortunately, she is a former bottle goat so pretty easy to work with. While we were moving her another goat was kidding and trying to steal someone else's kid. By the time we got the triplets that far, she had her kid and was cleaning it off. J snached this one of the triplets, rolled it in the afterbirth and left it with the nanny that had the single.
This is her pre graft, (no picture with the graft yet). So far so good. They were separated this evening but we got them back together and she still like her adopted kid. So fingers crossed on that one. Meanwhile, I am supplementing the other two triplets while we wait to see if she will have enough milk for two, which is pretty unlikely. I am also supplementing two others from two other sets of triplets. Triplets help with the kid count but sometimes they are a lot of extra work.
Kid Count - 45 (21 nannies)
1 comment:
It is always something. Quick thinking on J's part with that third triplet. I hope the graft works out. At least you have worked out a great multiple bottle feeding system if you end up with bottle goats (It does seems like you deal with bottle goats every year).
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