My Goat

I absolutely adore goats. Especially baby ones! So when my mammaw called me and she said, “I found you a little goat, it’s black”! I was absolutely ecstatic. I checked out and drove to my mammaws house to pick it up. She maybe weighed five pounds and she was all black except a white spot on her belly. I fell in love instantly. When I was taking her home, she laid down in the floorboard and slept all the way to Mid-Mountain, because I had to get goat replacer milk there. We got home and she followed me around like a little puppy and she slept in my lap and she maybe drank 5 tablespoons of milk at one time.

Rose the day I brought her home. In April

The hard thing about goats in that they come into this world trying to figure out how to die. This multiplies if they are not on their mother's milk, but on milk replacer. Rose stayed sick for two months, and I had to give her antibiotic shots every week to keep her immune system up because right after a week, she would be sick again. Also, she scratched constantly because she was absolutely covered in fleas. So I had to give her a shot for fleas, and give her a bath twice a week in the bathtub with a special soap to soothe her skin. I took her to vet eventually after she was breathing raspy, and the response I got: “Well, there is nothing I can do, goats die a lot and especially since this one is on milk replacer, she will probably die anyways, sorry.” I was very angry by the response I got from him, so I just took care of her myself, and she ended up doing fine once she got to be about two and a half months old. I kept her in the house as long as I could until she was bouncing off the couches. At night, I kept her a dog crate in our sun room.

She was a month old here.

At the same time, I had three bottle calves so dad made me a lot in front of our house for them plus Rose. I wanted it close since we had bad problems with wild dogs killing my calves at our barn where they would be alone up there. Rose did not like the lot, she liked the house. But eventually she just accepted it and followed the calves around. When she would get out, she liked to chase my dog, Bear, and butt him with her new horns that had come in. We had been grilling one day this summer and Rose was on the back porch with us, and we had been swimming and had just put the pool blanket on for the evening. Well, here comes Rose, hop hop hop, and then right into the pull and she sunk like a rock, so I just start freaking out and yelling at Josh to get her, so he jumped in and tossed her out, and from that day on she did not get around the pool again. One day this summer that nobody was home, Rose went missing and Josh and I looked all around the house, and we asked the neighbors if she might have gotten in with theirs, but she had not. I never found her. (569)

My Pigeon

I always have been and always will be utterly terrified of birds, no matter if they are little or big. That is the exact reason that I never would have imagined myself taking one in and caring for it while it was hurt. I did take one in, however. I was leaving school one evening and there was a big group of people standing out in the parking, they were laughing so loudly. I walked over there and asked what was so funny and I barely heard someone say “that pigeon hit the light pole” and then I see a guy carrying a bird back towards us. He said he found it outside the weight room door and brought it down to the parking lot and threw it up in the air and it hit the only pole in the parking lot. He then threw it in the air again and it landed head first on the pavement and then seemed to struggle to get up. So then someone said, “throw it up and let me hit it with this bat”, the human race at its finest. To which I thought I was explode from anger hearing that, I grabbed the pigeon from them and told them what I thought about them and I let it sit in my floorboard on the way home. I named the bird Pebbles, I thought it was a very unisex name, obviously.

Pebbles.

Pebbles could not walk straight, drink water, fly or eat food. I gave him water mixed with electrolytes through a syringe. He did not want to come out of the box I had given him to sleep in, and he pooped green. When he went to eat any food, it would just fall back out of his mouth. I did not think he would live very long at all. Also, he tremored continuously, it made me dizzy watching him shake so fast he was blurry. I had him barricaded in a room past our laundry room by having jugs set across the doorway. I had him confined there, and one day I opened the laundry room door and he was sitting there staring at me, in the wrong room to which I screamed like a child, because once again, I am terrified of birds and he was not where I left him. Josh had to put him back in the box before I would go back there to take care of him. About three weeks of having him, he finally was able to eat food normally and drink water on his own, which overjoyed me.

Then Josh had the idea one day to take him outside and see if he could fly yet while I was busy doing something else, my pigeon then proceeded to fly on top of the house and stay. So I was crying that he was gonna freeze to death that night or get ate, in June mind you. We had a bag of tennis balls, so what do we do? We threw tennis balls trying to make Pebbles come back off the house. Which did not work by the way, so we ended up spraying him off with a water hose.
Mom put him in the barn hoping he would make other bird friends, to which he stayed in the same spot for two days and then when I was leaving for work one morning, he was sitting next to the driveway. After that, he would just sit in the driveway all day, so mom bought him a bird bath, to which he stood in all day, everyday. I honestly did not think he would live very long, yet I had him for three months before my cats got him while I was gone. That is my story of having my first and only bird.

Foot Problems

Have you ever gotten a sore spot on your foot and you dreaded having to go anywhere because you will have to walk on that foot? It could have been from stepping on a gravel to a piece of glass, and it could be cut or just bruised and sore. Animals can do have sore feet too, irregardless if they have paws or hooves. Paws would be like injuring our own feet since they are considered to be“soft tissue”. Getting an injured hoof would be like having a injury that you cannot see, it is an internal bruise. When it bleeds within from the bruise then it will from an infection, which is called an abscess.

Just because an animal, let's say a horse for example, is limping does not mean it is an abscess. If you trim their hooves too short or past the white line(laminae) it will cause their feet to be very sore and they will walk as if they would rather not be putting any pressure on any of their feet. Doing this could also cause them to founder, but several other things could also cause them to founder. The technical name for founder is laminitis, and it is when there is inflammation is the laminae of the feet, laminae are what hold the hoof to the bone of the foot. It is manageable dependent upon the various pain degrees it causes. It can be in one foot, two, three, or all four feet. Some things can also make it “flare” up while before then the horse would have not been in any pain.

However, my horse got an abscess and could not hardly walk, he just stumbled around until I went to get him. I put him in his stall so he would not be moving around much at all and was able to keep his weight off of his foot. I cleaned the bottom of his hoof out really well and I could not see anything that looked wrong as to why he was limping on it so badly. It is possible to cut the abscess out with a hoof knife if you can locate the sore spot with a pair of hoof testers. My horse has had that done before but this time, I could not find the certain spot it was sore. So I called Doc Fuller and he told me to soak his hoof in a mixture of water and epsom salt for twenty minutes a day for four days. I did so and each day he began to put more weight on his foot until I quit soaking his foot and turned him back out.

Fix Your Pets!

I have always and always will love cats as I have five of my own. All of my cats have been strays, four of the five were kittens when I got them. Their names are Oscar, Smokey, Tom, Jerry, and my only girl, Bandit. Smokey, Tom, Jerry, and one other kitten were born under my back porch and I have three of them since they were weaned from their mother. I gave the one girl of the litter to Kristen, and it worked out great because she wanted a girl kitten and that is what I had to offer. The summer that they were weaned, I was working at Scoot Vet Services and I fixed my three kittens myself.  I took their mother to my uncle's barn because she was already pregnant and about to have another litter of kittens. I had set a live trap for a raccoon that kept eating the barn cats food, and I caught Oscar in it. I took Oscar back to the neighbors barn where he came from and set the trap again; he was in there the next day again. I decided to keep him and get him neutered. My boyfriend trapped a litter of kittens that were under his house and they were not tame at all, however I chose Bandit from the litter and I have now had her four months and she still is not the most friendly cat but she is still very cuddable when she chooses to let me carry her around and pet on her. She was fixed about three weeks ago and she had to wear a cone for ten days afterwards.

Left to Right: Jerry, Tom, and Smokey waking

up from anesthesia after being fixed.

Now that I have told you all about my cats, let me tell you about the actual reason that I wanted to talk about. Overpopulation is a major problem amongst mostly dogs and cats. They have litters two to three times each year and have anywhere from two to twelve babies each time. Then each of the babies are able to reproduce at about six months of age and thus multiplying the number of animals further. The rule of natural selection states that more organisms are produced than the amount of orgasisms that will survive. So many animals are homeless, injured, and uncared for, simply because there are just so many of them, all of my animals are neutered or spayed. Getting them fixed drastically lowers their chances of having cancers related to spikes in their hormones at the time they are in heat. Getting your animals fixed would solve a lot of problems due to the overpopulation of them. (450)

Bandit                                       Jerry

Warblers On A Rabbit

Most of the animals I have saw have been accident prone in some form or another. Sometimes they did something to injure themselves or something else did something to injure them. Whatever the case may be, injuries are almost inevitable amongst animals and most living things in general. One case of when something else inflicts an injury to another animal is in the case of warblers. Several different animals can get warblers including cows, dogs, horses, sheep, goats, squirrels, birds, cats, and even humans, but in the case of this blog, rabbits.

Bot flies are very common around manure and moisture, the typical place you will find most livestock. This is why bot flies create such problems with animals is because they have access to easy hosts. One way warblers are created are when a bot fly lands on the host and deposits an egg. They can also lay the eggs on manure, or on vegetation around animals and be ingested or inhaled and eventually find themselves at the host skin to feed. The egg then matures underneath the skin of the host, and then burrows throughout the host to feed, it creates a hole from the outside to breathe and surfaces so often. If you look at it, it can appear to be just a hole or it can have a large tumor-like appearance. The larger the surface hole, the larger the larvae.

The infection of a bot fly larvae.

If you monitor your animal, you will notice the worm surfacing. The hole will get very watery as the worm pushes fluid out with it. It is recommended that you let a Veterinarian remove the warbler because if it is ripped, it will release toxins that can result in death to the rabbit, or whatever the host may be. If you wait for the larvae to surface, it will be much easier to extract. Make sure you have gloves on, as this is a parasite. Then get a pair of tweezers and a small bottle of saline solution, so you will have somewhere to put the larvae once it is removed. Grab right about halfway down the larvae with the tweezers and clamp on it , but don’t squeeze too hard as that would cause the worm to be split in half resulting in the toxins seeping out. Gently tug against the worm and it should slip out, but sometimes it will take a little bit of wiggling to work the worm out, depending on the size and depth of the larvae. After the removal you should take a syringe and flush the wound with a saline solution to cleanse any debris out, and you should do this everyday for at least a week or until you see improvement in the wound.

After the removal of four larvae.

My Bottle Calf, Sam

Living on a farm that raises cattle, inevitably there are calves that might not get the opportunity to be raised by their mother. Whether it be a set of twins that the mother only accepts one, the mother die, or the mother not being able to provide enough milk for the calf to thrive on. When one of those things happen, you will have to raise the calf on milk replacer, and you are essentially their mother then. This year alone, I have had six bottle calves, having four at my house and two at my mammaws. In this blog, I am going to focus on my main calf, Sammie, who is six months old now.

Left to right: Pepper, Sam, Ginger

Sam was born on an extremely cold and snowy day in February, he was a twin and the mom had took his sister and left him huddled up against a rock by himself. My dog was smelling around him and that is what brought my attention to him. He could not hardly stand up by himself, so I got Josh to carry him to the barn and put him into our “sweep” room. He was much more lively than the calf I had just a few weeks prior to then. I kept a blanket on him for almost a month, which took the whole time to actually fit him since he was so little.

I thought nothing could get into that room with Sam but a dog did one night, but he was much more stout than the calf I had the month before.  It ripped his ear very badly and there were some bites on his neck, this ruckus woke me up about 4:30 that morning. The picture below was the morning that I had tried to get the bleeding to stop. I took it off the next evening to see that most of it was torn and I tried to clean it out very well to prevent a nasty infection. I cleaned it everyday with iodine and alcohol, both of which Sam did not like very much. I brought him to the house so he would be closer in the mornings for me to take care of him and he found out how to use stairs to get on the front porch and watch me do my homework. The tip of his ear did eventually fall off, but it healed very well considering it was ripped was a dog.

After his ears started to heal

After his ears started to heal, he became more attentive to the everyday surroundings instead of just ignoring or flinching at every loud noise.  Though there was pain bleats from Sam when I would clean his ear  and an endless amount of exaggerated head slings, Sam still stood strong.  After about two weeks Sam's ear had began to scab over and heal up pretty solidly.  Sam's ear healed up and so did he.  Spoiled is his middle name, even today Sam knows he's got it made. (512)

Now, as of 8/26/16

How It Started

Ever since I was a little kid, I have wanted to be a veterinarian. When I was little I remember wrapping up my dog, Lady, in white pipe thread tape and saying she had a ‘boo-boo’.  The summer of 2014 I had the opportunity to shadow the only actual large animal vet around my area, and I loved it. I was literally his shadow all summer long in surgeries, farm calls, and anything else we did, it made me want to become a vet even sooner than I had before. Recently, the only times I have been able to go to the vet office was when I had an animal to take up there myself, and the last time it was to find out our dog Annie had cancer. Normally though, it is just for routine shots or to get a cat or dog fixed so they cannot have about fifty babies running around for dad to fuss about.

I have been raised on a farm, which has gave me plenty of animals to take care of, not including the ones I picked up, which have happened quite often since I was about eight. I have took care of our cows by vaccinating, delivering stuck calves, trimming lame cows with overgrown hooves, ear tagging, and worming them on a twice a year basis. In the winter, it gets very muddy wherever you feed at and smaller calves are very bad for getting scares, which is basically diarrhea times ten that can kill them if left untreated, depending on the size and health of the calf, anywhere from 1 week to a month is crucial to treat that with scare oblets(diarrhea stopper and antibiotics).

I also feed for my neighbors when they are gone and I usually end up having to treat one of their animals while they are gone since animals are accident prone. For example, about three weeks ago, my neighbors dog attacked their goat and when she told me about it this is what she said, “eh, it’s nothing, it will just have a few scars on its head.” Well, whenever I got out there, it had an abscess on his neck the size of a tennis ball, its ear was hanging a good two inches lower than its other ear, and its cheek was swollen out, all from infection that had set up from four days prior. Luckily, five days of Penicillin shots and a mixture of alcohol and iodine cleared the infection up.