Quit Mansplaining Raising Dairy Goats To Me: A Blog

I mentioned a few of the more common goat ailments in my last entry, but what about goat injuries? I’ve seen a few spectacular lacerations. But very few. I remember a goat slicing her side, top to bottom, and exposing her ribcage. My mom, a former vet tech, sewed it up when a vet couldn’t be reached. It healed with barely a scar.

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer (most goat peeps are do-it-yourselfers), pick up some sterile suture packs, the kind with a needle and catgut (no, it’s not actual cat gut, at least according to Chat GPT), and some surgical scrub, and put it somewhere safe. It’s good to have some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories on hand, too, if you’re able to source them.

Of course, use a vet if you have a vet, but you may find yourself in a situation where you need to deal with an emergency on a weekend when every local vet went to the same out-of-state convention. Or when you didn’t have the disposable income to justify the vet bill. (That’s okay.)

In my experience, goat lacerations heal well, stitched or not. In spots you can wrap or tape, that’s an option, too. If you can’t do anything but keep it clean, that may well be enough. (I’m not a vet, and I can’t give advice. I’m just spitballing injuries I’ve seen and how I’ve handled them, in the hope it might be helpful to someone. Goats are fragile, but also really resilient. They’re an enigma.)

This reminds me of another common type of injury. (And a story. Hang on.) Most dairy goats are disbudded. As those burns heal, scabs form and get knocked off during rough-and-tumble play, and it isn’t uncommon for some bleeding to occur. (It’s not particularly common, either, but disbud enough goats, and you’ll see some blood).

If you have horned goats, horn injuries are less common, but they happen. Broken horns bleed like crazy. Here’s the thing, though. What looks like a life-threatening amount of bleeding, be it from a recently disbudded head, or a horn injury, usually isn’t. Blood stop powder may help. Pressure works better. Cauterizing with a disbudding iron often works. Most times, watching in horror until the blood clots works, too. Head wounds bleed a lot. Anyway, to my story.

I know someone who bought a goat kid. Had it disbudded. (I didn’t disbud it. I wasn’t involved in any way, beyond hearing the story. So yeah, bit of an armchair quarterback sitch, but.) Brought it home. It started bleeding. This someone’s husband decided a mercy killing was the answer, because, “…there was so much blood!” and he was afraid the goat would bleed to death. So he killed it.

That story makes me sick every time I think about it. And every time I disbud a kid for someone else, I tell it. And then I tell them all the ways to stop bleeding if it happens. And I advise that, worst-case scenario, bleeding out isn’t a terrible way to go. (Again, I’m in no position to give advice. Ask a vet, always. If there isn’t a vet to ask–and sometimes there isn’t–do your best. But don’t panic. You have time, even in the face of exposed ribs or copious amounts of blood.)

I’m going to Part II this.

Places to be, things to do.