I’d never heard of such a thing before but the vet actually mentioned that today. Much like the trip to Cornell, some things are out of the question, including a sex change operation for my goat. I live him, he’s kinda my favorite of the three, but I have limits.
It was just a tiny bit of the tip, enough to clear the stone. I wish I had a more clever answer but @Clutch nailed it.
I was just listening to a homesteading podcast about raising goats and they mentioned that urinary calculi are the most common health thing you run into for male goats. They said to be careful about the amount of grain to give them. @walt did the vet indicate this was diet related or just bad luck, or a bit of both? I'd like to keep goats some day and am curious about how it all works.
Well right off the top, it’s common in neutered males because their urethra doesn’t grow to maturity size. And the male urethra is already smaller as it is. It’s an imbalance of calcium to phosphorus which you have to be a frickin’ chemist to figure out. Often times the imbalance is in the feed, particularly the grain. However it can be in the hay as well. The on call vet said sometimes a change in hay can cause this, and we did change providers, but that was back in August so who knows. It can also just be genetic. So we’ll have to make some changes to their diet. They only get crimped oats for grain, and not a lot at that. But they’ll be getting less, if any. And I have to talk our vet this week and see what she wants me to do. Ammonium chloride is a good supplement to prevent further stones. It makes their urine acidic enough to dissolve stones trying to form. Our local Tractor Supply stores don’t carry it ( go figure ) so I ordered it from Amazon for the fastest shipping. This penis snipping is a one time fix, after this it’s more involved. And to be honest, as much as it would break my heart I’d probably have to have him put down. So I’m gonna really be aggressive with treatment.
@walt thanks for the info, that is interesting. I'll have to read more about ammonium chloride as a supplement.
I found this link while doing some casual googling: https://backyardgoats.iamcountrysid...ing ammonium chloride for,is 0.5% of the feed. This article indicates it is safe to sprinkle on feed regularly to counteract stone formation. Sounds like you got your goat treatment in good time because it can be fatal fast, even with emergency treatment.
Yeah it was a combination of luck that I was out there long enough to notice his behavior was different and knowing what to watch for once I realized he was acting “off”. Knowing your animals is really important, no matter the species. He spent much of today laying down and only nibbling at food but tonight he attacked the hay. So if he’s still looking good tomorrow morning I think it’s safe to say he’s safe and just needs to heal.
Jungle Julia's stupid-ass fucking dog got loose some time last night and killed four geese, and really fucked up two others. I am not going to have a good weekend.
Back in the 80s (hopefully the statute of limitations has expired) a couple of guys I was in high school with shot a Canada goose (bow) at a local park, dressed it, and grilled it on a bbq for a party. It was delicious.
I finally got what I've often wished for, with a white Christmas and snow melt immediately after. The unusually warm temperatures have allowed me to keep the goat pen cleaned out more frequently which is a real bonus. They waste a lot of hay, which piles up quick in addition to the manure. I was gonna do a deep clean of that and the chicken coop today, but the temps dropped to 20 and it snowed. When that melts off in the next day or two I'll get some cleaning done and keep up with it as much as possible until we get dumped on or the temps drop to zero. When that happens, a little extra hay on the floor, even if a little dirty, keeps them comfy. Despite all my grousing about the cost of feed and letting the animals die off without replacing them, I think I'm gonna grab a half dozen chicks at Tractor Supply this year if nothing else. It's really nice not having to buy eggs, even if they are slowed down a lot despite artificial lighting. I do miss having my ducks, but have to stay strong.
We got new chickens this week. We figured out a new home for them once they are grown up enough to go outside as their old house, although really aesthetically pleasing, just isn't secure enough to be a chicken coop. There's too many possible entry points for predators and too much work would need to be done to get it up to snuff. (pouring a new concrete slab, completely walling off a connecting garage etc) So we are relocating their old run which is just a giant 8x10 hardware cloth box with a pitched roof. We are going to build an inner sleeping roost that we will fully box and add an automatic door so they can come and go in the morning without us needing to go let them out. We are also going to make a connecting door for them to be able to "free range" in another 8x12 spot which is a just a bunch of lilac bushes. That will be fenced around the ground, but not be fully encased in hardware cloth. We'll have to open the second door for them to be able to free range and we won't really do that unless we are around to keep an eye on them. Can't have any more incidents with murdered chickens. Here's a couple photos of them. We have a good mix of egg color and good looking chickens. I finally was able to get a silver wyanndotte, which is my favorite looking chicken.
First egg of 2023. I put their red heat lamp on last night but the timing is probably a coincidence. My old girls stopped laying at the end of the summer and the new girls hadn't started up yet. I said enough was enough. The girls can sense spring is around the corner, they keep following Mr Drake around acting flirty and he's in Al Bundy mode.
Apparently, according to the Twitter experts on climate change, novel viruses, constitutional matters, vaccinations, and now poultry farming, "THEY" are putting mRNA something into chicken feed to try to stop chickens from laying eggs. There are hundreds of threads and responses saying, "My chickens haven't laid an egg in weeks until we switched their feed to a local brand that's not been infected with The Jab and now they are back to laying normally." I'm kind of at the point in life where I seriously want to cull about 5-6 billion people off the planet for being too stupid to exist with the rest of humanity...