Monday, May 25, 2015

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Last week was a very rough week. Tuesday evening, Alice just seemed off. By Wednesday morning she had a 106.5 degree fever and was foaming at the mouth. I rushed her in to Auburn University. 

They got her on antibiotics, banamine, IV fluids, and started running tests. Two ultrasounds, a milk culture, CBC, and a urinalysis later, we still had no answers. She kept deteriorating.

By Saturday morning, all the vets agreed that her prognosis was poor. The only thing left in their arsenal was a $700 CT scan. As Dr. Maxwell put it, "Only 1/20 of the things the scan could show would be treatable". 

We made the decision to have her put down and have a necropsy performed. I am still waiting on the results. Jeff was able to be there with her at the end. I was having a miserable morning at the farmers market. It's not the best place to receive news like this. 

In the end, the best diagnosis the vets could come up with was a lesion on the spinal column. We asked if it was anything we did. Could we have done anything different? They all agreed no, this is a 1/10,000 kind of thing. I was also concerned for the rest of my herd but they assured me that they had no indication that this was anything infectious. In fact, before she spiraled downhill Saturday morning, we were considering taking her home to see if her own environment would help her recover. 

It's difficult to lose an animal. Even more difficult since she was my favorite and had so much potential. She was only two years old and was already my second highest producer. I am comforted to have her daughter here still, poor little orphaned baby.

There was a glimmer of good news this weekend. A breeder north of Atlanta needed to downsize her herd for family reasons and posted a list of goats she was selling. I really wanted Emilie off that list, but by the time I contacted her, Emilie was already sold. I settled on Kami. Early last week, the breeder wrote to let me know that the deal with Emilie had fallen through and did I want her too. How could I say no?

So after losing my sweet Alice Saturday morning, we picked up two gorgeous dry yearlings Saturday afternoon. My heart is still aching, this was the first adult goat I've lost and it was so much more tragic since she was so young. Things still look bright for the future of our herd though- two steps forward, one step back.....


Montage KVG Emilie


Mint*Leaf Kami

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear about your loss! it is hard to lose one of our animals, especially a favorite!

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