Our little Jessica, one of the twin goat girls almost died the other night. Oy Vey! How distressing. She ate some poisonous weed, we think deadly nightshade. I got home from a ride and saw her in the stall with green slimy foam around her mouth. She was clearly in pain, grinding her jaw and bleating plaintively. Her ability to stand was wobbly. We got advice to give her activated charcoal from Danny Botkin, the man we got the goats from. Zoe was on her way home from his farm and stopped to get some. In the meantime, I also called Rachel from Little White Goat Dairy. I have gotten pasture maintenance advice from her husband, Bruce, in the past. Rachel insisted on coming right over, bringing activated charcoal gel, syringes, milk of magnesian and goat electrolyte powder. She drove all the way to Orange at the drop of a hat and then examined Jessica. She had gotten worse. We learned how to squirt the charcoal, milk of magnesia and electrolyte water down the left side of her mouth so it was less likely to go into her bronchial tubes. The charcoal is meant to absorb the poison. Milk of magnesia helps coat the stomach and push the poison through. Zoe and I then drove to the Tractor Supply in Greenfield to buy our own supplies for her. When we got home she was worse. She could not stand up and was looking very out of it.
Our next step was to call the emergency vet number. There is a large animal vet always on call around here which was amazing to me! Yet, the area is large and I imagined driving the sick goat back to Greenfield or Easthampton or Colrain. I was so relieved that the vet on call was Rose McWilliams at Hess Mcwilliams Veterinary Services. How fortunate that they are literally around the corner! We were there in five minutes! Rose was very experienced and knowledgable. She told us that the charcoal had done its work and Jessica didn’t need anymore but that we should give her Milk of Magnesia every 2-3 hours. This helps prevent acidosis. In addition, she explained that the only way goats can get vitamin B is to create through a bacterial process in their rumen. The rumen is a sort of stomach. Food goes into the rumen and partially digests and then goes back up for the goat to chew some more. It is the same as cows chewing cud. The word rumen is the root of the verb rumenate. They just keep chewing and chewing on the same stuff. There is a bacteria that gets created in this process that produces the B vitamins they need. When they are poisoned, the become quickly deficient in this vitamin. Jessica’s neurological symptoms were primarely from vitamin B deficiency. The vet gave us injections of thiamin.
We got back and I injected Jessicas hip with the thiamin and gave her some oral banamine the vet had given me for pain. We decided not to separate the mom, Jasmine for the night as we usually do, for her comfort. I got up at 2 am to give her more milk of magnesia and electrolytes and to our incredible relief, she was SO much better! By morning she was her old self! She was jumping around, butting heads with her sister, leaping onto the chicken coop and eating voraciously. Yay Jessica!
Thanks for the commentary. How do you have time to do this? Happy endings are always happy.