Sometimes you just wanna throw in the towel... Update #3

<--for you @newbiekat So sorry about the lost one and I'm really pulling for this little one to make it through for you! You can only do what you can do, and she has to do her part! Glad things aren't looking quite so grim, understanding she's not out of the woods yet. Hang in there!

So sorry to hear of your losses also @mysunwolf and @Fullhousefarm guess it's that time of year... lots of joy and some sadness.

Update #2...

Baby didn't make it. I was up every 2 hours from when we got her home yesterday evening till this morning at 11. She had about 10 cc's of Dextrose every 4-6 hrs through her IV cath (depending on her status), but we only got that 2cc's through the bottle right at the beginning. After that, we had to tube her twice. once with 4cc's once with 2. She was a scrawny little thing through the night. At the 530am feeding she was looking pretty rough. Crashed again, temp dropped, lethargic, etc. We did all we could, but as @Latestarter said...

Latestarter said:

You can only do what you can do, and she has to do her part!

Click to expand...

and she couldn't keep up...

Meanwhile, around 10 last night we find our herd queen (who has not been involved with any of this fiasco- minus losing the two bucks at birth), and best milker, laying out, not wanting to get up to nurse her baby, not wanting to get on the stand to be milked (when she's always the one pushing her way through)... She has a BAD case of Mastitis. We milked her out, and treated her with ToDay.

This morning, around 9 we go out and check and she's in even worse shape than last night. Her temp had dropped to 94*. We gave her Pen G, Banamine, and B Complex, and then called the vet. We ended up bringing her in to the vet too. *The vet has seen and heard from us ALOT this last week*

They put her under a heat lamp, took some blood to run a CBC and chem, took a fecal, and put an IV of fluids in her. Her glucose level was pretty low also, so they ran some dextrose into her IV. So she is currently at the vet receiving fluids. We are waiting for results from the fecal and bloodwork. The vet thinks the Mastitis is worse than we thought and is spreading to the body?? She is also giving some antibiotic (in addition to the Pen G that we gave this morning).

While this is going on, we have to figure out how to get her doeling on a bottle while her mom is at the vet for who knows how long. This doeling who has been dam raised. We are hoping she will get hungry enough in a few hours that she will take it, but who knows.

I am exhausted. I am ready for all of this to be over.

On man... when it rains it pours... I'm kinda at a loss for words. Just so sorry you're going through all this. Try to take care of yourself through all this as best you can.

Oh I am so sorry My heart goes out to you

With the Momma doe with the low temp, do you think she needs calcium?

Hoping she pulls thru and everything calms down. We have all had those moments... If you can, wait until everything settles down and have gotten a good nights sleep and then make your choice.

I am so sorry you are having such a rough time!

It is so hard to lose kids and to have your big girl in distress is really hard too.

Hoping your queen comes around and that her kid decides to take a bottle for you.

Gee whiz. You have been hit with the ugly stick of bad luck.
Sometimes raising livestock can be very rewarding and fun. Then there are the times that it just eats you up. I will pray that things turn around and the animals get better and you can get some sleep.

I'm so sorry! I pray the momma makes it, and the baby takes a bottle!

What a ordeal you have been through. I am really sorry. With the does temp being low I would have suspected hypocalcemia but the vet should have found that out easily enough. The low temp would worry me more than the mastitis. I hope she makes it through this. I have had it take as many as three days for a kid to transition to a bottle. I have also had it happen immediately, each kid is different; but don't give up. When she gets hungry she will take that bottle.

Update #3...

Momma didn't make it.

The vet called Saturday evening with the results. Fecal was good. No extreme bout of worms, but the bloodwork "surprised her". She said Cloud's red blood cell count was EXTREMELY low. Like, the low of lows for goats should be around 22%... she had 5% and her neutrophil level was extremely low too. She was giving fluids for the dehydration, but said she was having a hard time balancing them because the more she gave to help with the dehydration, the more it diluted her already extremely low RBC levels, the more panting Cloud did and the faster her heart raced looking for oxygen... The vet said she thought the Mastitis (which was pretty aggressive) came on quickly due to the fact that her body could not fight off infection with the low amount of neutrophils in her body, and she also thought she was losing blood due to a hemorrhage, potentially in the uterus. Basically twisted gut from giving birth. She said the only other option would be a blood transfusion, but even with that it would only be a 50/50 shot. And if she does have the hemorrhage in her uterus, if the transfusion worked well enough long enough we could do surgery and remove her uterus, but again, that's IF she survived surgery. And the vet didn't have any goat blood on hand, so we would have to bring in one of our other mommas to do the transfusion... ETC ETC... So in the end, we decided to put her down, and buried her that evening.

Her now orphaned doe kid would not take a bottle all day Saturday, but finally took one Sunday morning, and by Sunday evening she was looking for the bottle, so that's a relief that she finally took the bottle!

As for the baby with the wobbly legs, we gave her a 1/4cc of bose on Friday morning, and had been locking her in the pen, giving her access to momma every couple hours as we were afraid that she might be able to get a few steps outside of the barn but maybe not find her way back. As of Saturday we opened her up all the way and let her roam. On Saturday evening, I am pleased to announce that the little runt was hopping and bopping around just as good as the others!! Her hips seem much smaller, but then again, she was only 5.05 lbs at birth, and though her belly gets full every time she nurses, I dont know that she has grown a whole lot in the last couple days... Then again, I have week old BIG babies to compare her to, so I think she's doing just fine... WHAT A RELIEF! Saturday night into Sunday was the first time since Thursday that we didn't get up in the middle of the night to feed. We left them a full 8 hours before going out to let everyone nurse, and I'm pleased to say that none of them died in the mean time. THANK GOD.

So as of right now, we have 6 of our original 10 babies still, 3 of which are bucklings and will be sold. The other 3 were potential keeps, but with the recent events, I believe we will be keeping all of them.

This has been probably the WORST week of goat keeping ever. Hopefully all of these terrible "learning" adventures are OVER. I don't know what I would do if I had a bigger herd and that happened to a larger number of goats. It just breaks my heart!

I am so thankful for all of you and your support...

I will post pictures as soon as I can. They are on my phone and I'll try to get them uploaded soon.