Pics

Milk foam.

Me, Elise, and Zac dyed the goats green for St. Patty's day!

"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”Gen 4:7

Abscess

If you have a weak stomach or get grossed out by medical nastiness then you should probably just click that little 'x' on the top right of your screen or google search pictures of puppies. Today will shall talk of abscesses!

I have a goat, Ann or as some would call her... #38. Just so you know, all of our does receive numbers and all the males receive a letter. I had notices a small bump forming on the back of her udder a month ago or so. I talked it over with David, the farm manager, and we decided it was an abscess and we would want until it is on the verge of popping before we drained it. Now an abscess can form for numerous reasons. Could be some type of infection or the worst fear of goat owners, CL or caseous lymphadenitis. "CL is a highly contagious bacterial disease that affects sheep and goats. CL is characterized by abscess formations in the skin, internal and external lymph nodes, and internal organs. CL is a worldwide chronic disease in goats and sheep." (http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/U/UNP-0085/) CL is a zoonotic diesease, meaning it's transferable to humans. The true sign of this disease is the external abscess although there are abscesses internally. Extreme precaution has to be taken when you might thing a goat has this. We have to isolate the animal and lance the cyst  right before it is about to pop. If it pops the disease could spread like wild fire. It is about to pop the abscess losing all the hair on top of it. There are some who might try to save the animals but here we just can't take the risk if the goat has confirmed CL by a lab test.

               

So on Monday, I put Ann and her kid in isolation far from the herd. David and I lanced open the back of her udder. We took a scapel and cut in 'x' over the abscess. David had to go really deep. It was so disgusting. Then he began to squeeze out this toothpaste consistency pus. It was stomach turning. I collected a sample of the goop in a test tube that I will send off to the lab. If she does have CL, we will unfortunately kill her and we will probably kill the kid as well because we don't want the risk of having CL in our herd. If CL spread we could be trying to eradicate it for years! I sent in the sample I collected and I'm waiting to hear back!

Lesson on mastitis

Today we will talk about mastitis. I had a milking goat get mastitis this week and I had to treat her. Mastitis in simple words is an inflamed udder, specifically in the mammary gland. Now lactating anything can get mastitis, even breast feeding women. Some of you moms may already know this fact. The udder becomes hard and warm. The milk has clumps in it that are grainy. The goat that had mastitis is named Brat. She had these huge chunks in her milk. To treat her we have to milk her all the way out to get as much of the infection out as possible then I put a blunt tip syringe up her teat sphincter (yes, it's really called a sphincter) and put medicine up her teat. Then I massaged the medicine up into the udder. This is done only twice, 12 hours apart. 96 hours later we can sell her milk again. So next Wednesday we will start bottling her milk again.

My grandparents, brother and sisters are coming in 1 week and 6 days!!! I'm so excited! (That's for you Pam) I'll be making an apple pie this afternoon because I'm bored.

Also I made a stand to someone last night who finally asked me about not being at devotions two weeks ago. I said I will not move from my faith and I didn't see what was happening in devotion in the scriptures so I left. We ended up having a really great convo and it went really well. I'm happy with the weekend.

I did great at my business plan meeting. I have been writing a business plan for the livestock enterprise since arriving here. It's a lot of work. I have to do the plan, goals and budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Then I presented last fiscal years, the new goals for the upcoming year and the budget to the farm, staff and board members. Looking back... wasn't that bad.

A day of firsts is not always a good day...

Today something happened for the first time to me that was not happy, pleasant, joyous, good, or enjoyable in any way. Today... today is a bad day.

Two days ago I assisted a momma goat in a twin birth. I had to break the sacks and pull the second one out. They seemed super healthy. They pranced around and suckled from their mom, Triple. For those of you keeping up, I've been waiting for Triple to give birth for a long time now. I got a call today from Steven that I needed to come out to the kid barn right away. So I drove up there to find a lifeless little body laying in the pen, looking as he was simply sleeping after filling his belly. As I bent over to touch him I quickly snapped to reality as his entire body was stiff. Such a small innocent little life. I know some of you would simply say, it's just an animal and that's life. But if we really paused and thought of it, this is not the way it's supposed to be. We live in a fallen world where crappy things happen all the time. I'm not trying to be a pessimist or nihilist or any other fancy word for a negative person, but maybe simply a realist. I picked up the body and walked it out through our back pasture and laid him under a tree. I bowed there and prayed, asking for forgiveness for our fallen world. I thanked Jesus for his redemption, that we are redeemed and renewed by his blood. I left it there and walked back and cuddled with a puppy and frantically checked the other baby goat over from head to hoof, in this case. I even bottle fed him a full bottle to be sure he had something in his stomach. Even still, there is nothing in my own power to save life. God sustains us all and he cares for each of us.

So today.... today is a bad day, but God willing tomorrow will be better.