Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Our goat saga

Not really a Saga I suppose. But a somewhat sad story, with an ending that could have turned out much worse.

We have 4 goats. Three Nigerian Dwarves and 1 Spanish Boer. The Boer is a show goat my daughter *was* going to show at this year's fair.
 This isn't the best picture, but shows three of the four goats. The black ones are sisters and the brown and white one, we've had for about 4 years now. Clifford.


We live out in the country. We have one tiny little fluffy dog that stays inside. No outside dogs. Two Saturday mornings ago, we wake up to a crazy racket. Dogs barking, the goats were making whatever noise it is they make. It was just about daylight. My husband and I run outside and find two large dogs running from our property. We go check on the goats and find two injured. One ( the little showgoat Lizzie) quite injured. She was crying like a baby, bloody and overall just pitiful. The other one just acted like his leg hurt and wouldn't walk, and had a few small knicks on him.

 ( Cupcake)

So over the last two weeks I have given antibiotic shots, cleaned the wounds twice a day, given them topical antibiotic, and for the first week we put an umbrella over Lizzie because it was so hot and she couldn't walk to get shade.

You might not can tell by this picture but they have about 3 brushed acres fenced in. There is a small shelter they normally sleep under, but we added the dog pen with the barrels for Lizzie , because if the dogs were to come back there is no way she could protect herself.  We also added another row of barbed wire around the top.


So, the good news is that Lizzie is recovering. She can now stand up to pee (YAY!!) and can walk a few steps at a time to get into better positions, go to bed etc. The vet said nothing was broken or dislocated and she was likely just sore from having her legs and tail pulled on by the dogs.

So we set up a game cam and saw the dogs again the next night. They didn't bother the goats this time. I have no idea who the dogs belong to, and have asked around and no one seems to know. But maybe someone did know because it's been about 10 days with no sign of the. Crossing my fingers.

Lizzie may not be able to be shown this year. But we all learned a lot through this, we love our pets. We took turns giving her shots, sitting with her, petting her, holding the water bucket up to her mouth to drink. Positioning the umbrella so this silly goat would have shade. Rubbing her down with a cool rag. No, perhaps my daughter isn't going to show her this year, but in my book she has learned a lot about life, about living on a farm..


Happy Homesteading Y'all!

5 comments:

  1. So sorry to hear what happened. You have a great attitude about it. Everything is a lesson. Blessings...

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  2. Oh no! Almost the exact same thing happened to us this year. My son's nice show goat was attacked (though we never saw what did it...coyotes?). Luckily she made a nice recovery in time for our fair. She has some definite scars, though. We recently got a Great Pyrenees in the hopes that he will help protect our small herd.

    Hope your goat heals nicely!

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    1. We are looking into getting us a good dog like that. Glad your son's goat recovered!

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  3. People dump dogs out by us all the time. The dogs then form packs by instinct and attack local livestock. Many times they have to be shot because they cannot be caught by animal control. So sad. Even more sad is the apathy of the people who drop off their animals thinking “some nice country folk will take them in.”

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    1. You are so right! We see them pretty often. I also think sometimes people think that the animals can take care of themselves- not true! They have to find food to eat which could include other people's livestock.

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