Buddy

What a strange day. Last week one of my goats, Buddy, decided to stop eating his grain. This is not a good thing since goats love food more than anything else in this entire universe. So when one goes off his food it usually means something is pretty wrong. He was still eating hay so I didn't think much of it. He started to get quite a bloated look a few days ago which made me think he had Bloat. Bloat is a condition that ruminant animals can get when they ingest too rich of foods and gases build up in their gut. This can happen often in the spring where there is ample amounts of fresh green weeds and grasses. This is usually not a huge deal. You have to give them baking soda and sometimes vegetable oil to break down the gases in their gut. I did this with no result. Poor Buddy was looking worse and worse each day.

Buddy is my favorite of the four livestock animals we own. He's a sweet, very tame goat. He was bottle fed as a baby and actually lived in his previous owners house because he was born early in the season when there was still snow on the ground. He's an all around good natured animal.

Today Sean took a day off of work so I loaded Buddy into our one horse trailer and took him to the vet. Amazingly enough I had a hard time finding a vet that would look at my sick goat. I assumed that most farm vets would do goats but I assumed wrong. My normal horse vet didn't but I finally found one that would take a look. The vet came out to the trailer and automatically commented on how wide he is. When an animal gets bloated their little sides just stick straight out. Buddy was about as wide as he was tall. She told me that fixed male goats (whethers) can often get a urinary tract problem where bladder stones get clogged in their urethra and will prevent them from being able to urinate. I'd heard about this but didn't once think that's what was ailing him. She decided to tube him by placing a tube down his throat into his stomach to release some of the gases. Before she did that she wanted to make sure that it was air inside his gut and not something else so she stuck a needle in his underbelly and withdrew a syringe full of urine. It seems poor Buddy got a clogged urethra which prevented him from urinating thus causing his bladder to burst inside of his abdomen. He was bloated from all the urine filling up his belly. It was awful. Poor goat.

The vet kindly said the most humane thing would be to put poor Buddy out of his misery. Sweet Buddy is now in the big goat pasture in the sky. It really was not what I was expecting. I thought they'd tube him and release the supposed gases and home we'd go, no harm no foul. It just amazes me how such a sturdy little animal like a goat can succumb to something like a bladder stone. She said it is common in goats and very common in fixed male goats. There wasn't anything I could have done to prevent this. Bye Buddy, I'll miss ya.

Buddy and I in 2006 when he was just a few months old

Buddy and Rocky 2008