rachels.haven's Journal

[Mini Horses]

Back when CL vaccine for goats was relatively new, I vac'd all of my Boer herd. The tests do show a positive account if you test shortly after, as the titers raise. As to CL, it seems to be an attitude of "not if but, when"

 

[rachels.haven]

They refused? Their reality is that they just don’t want to know.
Keeping your flock safe is truly a challenge. How far do you have to go to get a goat from a tested herd?

I have a few options.
I can pay about $400 extra to have them driven up from GA or AL, or slightly more to have them flown or driven down from breeders I know from Mass or NH. Driving across country with a mess of young children is challenging for now, so it's pay someone without kids to do it or don't. Right now in our financial situation I can do that if I really wanted to (but I'd rather put it towards paying off the mortgage early, of course)

I have a friend three hours away who breeds Saanens with nigerian dwarves on the side who wants me to buy a buck and a buckling from her in Alabama especially because we milk test and she wants the data on her bloodlines on file. She doesn't test routinely, but she only buys from tested herds and would be happy to let me come down and test. If positives came up she'd be devastated too and none of this head in sand nonsense. I think pre-child she was a chemist for a pharmaceutical company. Currently she's a saanen breeder first and a ND breeder second and she's strict on getting actual dairy and show performance from them or they don't stay and offspring don't get sent out. She's too busy to want to hide herd illness. This friend would also love a social call and a chance for our kids to meet her kid, which I hope could make the trip worth it for the kids (*please?*). I didn't really want to bring in ND though. I wanted to skip the breeding out of the ear thing because it's frustrating and silly to throw out goats for ear length.

The lady from the youtube video above in KY would also be 100% okay with me coming and testing any potential dams or purchases on my dollar or (heck) even her whole herd if I gave her results. She knows I wouldn't judge her personally for positives and be level headed in my choices after. She's working up her minis from grade though. I may not have an issue with that. She is working on improving udders and I may want to wait on that. I have one of her goats in my herd already and she's clean, which is encouraging (the doe won't settle and the lady logically didn't want to keep her if she's not producing so I got offered a chance to try. No luck and it looks like the doe still may get eaten unless someone wants a horse companion, which this doe would excel at)

There's another lady with a fantastic but higher lamancha percentage also in KY who may be working through a CL positive that I'd trust because of her honesty. Her goats are more lamancha than dwarf though and if I put them over a lamancha on top of that the resulting kids won't be very mini. She's basically re-creating more perfect old style lamanchas and her goats are total eye candy. Wrong dwarf lamancha ratio for breeding back to standard though. I'd trust her to give me a freshly pulled kid that never touched the outside ground if I asked for it (she already raises on CAE prevention). Not sure I'd want or need to put her through that though.

I am fine without the small genetics for now (I'm telling myself). I have older does I'd like to carry smaller kids and there will be future FF that would benefit as well, but I may try to milk the older does through this year if I can keep it up and do what I always do with the future ff.

Stupid drama.

 

[farmerjan]

Maybe be "stupid drama" to you, but we can certainly give you a good place to vent this..... and there is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with wanting a certain protocol for the health of your animals.

 

[rachels.haven]

Maybe be "stupid drama" to you, but we can certainly give you a good place to vent this..... and there is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with wanting a certain protocol for the health of your animals.

Thank you for being so supportive. I know we're all different and raising for different goals. I know that there are probably people on here that have to deal with and do fine with CL in their meat or even dairy herds. That makes me EXTREMELY grateful for encouraging words.

Back when CL vaccine for goats was relatively new, I vac'd all of my Boer herd. The tests do show a positive account if you test shortly after, as the titers raise. As to CL, it seems to be an attitude of "not if but, when"

It totally is "when" but I'm hoping the when for us and anyone else who has the goal is to be able to catch things with screening tests and isolate and test abscesses. I guess that means I should put in a front yard quarantine pen (or even at my parents house 10 minutes away) and close my herd and hope for the best.

A lot of the vets here just say if your goat has ANY lump it's CL and if that attitude has been going on for long enough it's probably true. Meanwhile I've had baby goats with mouth abscesses from hay poking them (white and watery, spoiled milk and rotty smell, tested for other bacteria via waddl), salivary glad abscesses (took over whole neck on a standard doe and looked and seemed to be full of spit, very disturbing, reabsorbed), interdigital sinus blockages (like a big gross zit between toes from basically an oil gland between the toes getting something up it, swelling the foot up, then finally

popping and emptying out), and vaccine abscesses as well as fatty tumors and if I'd asked those vets about any of those I'd think we had CL. Yet they were all very gross and not CL. *shiver* My "when" was not yet.

...'scuse me. I've got to go forget all those now after remembering all at once. Ew, ew, ew.

Edit: Wow, my internet conked out for a bit and made the post go screwy. Sorry. I don't even know how to do that on purpose.

 

[rachels.haven]

This morning and presumably last night Riker decided that a living opossum belonged in the barn in the barn. As long as it stayed in the barn with the goats he was happy. I was not.

So one pair of work gloves and a pair of leather gloves later I got the muck shovel and a big red flag back bucket and I scooped that nasty bitey thing into my bucket, removed him from the barn and dumped him over the fence and upset Riker very much.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Riker got very chewed out and yelled at but he does not care. Because in his mind he does not need me, does not want me, and does not like me. There is only goats...and apparently opossums.

This is WRONG, Riker.

 

[Baymule]

Poor Riker. He just wanted a friend! Maybe you should rent a possum costume and see if he likes you any better.

 

[rachels.haven]

The hand chopped hay re-annalysis came back yesterday, worse than the original one on protein-3.5%. No, my does just like eating fluffy junk food. Fine, I guess they can have an extra bale every day until we run out of it.

I tape wormed the bucks with a novel wormer earlier and the ruttiness is supposed to be decreasing and everyone, especially Pete, is just starting to eat just better and put on more condition. The two bucklings in the pen are going to get fat before he stops looking like an emaciated distance runner (and okay, THEY have probably been eating fine this whole time-just not Pete). That poor buck is going to rut himself to death and I'm left wondering if I should hurry up and try again to get him collected and send him onto another herd so I don't have to watch it happen and to get even more offspring on the ground faster to prove him out.

Pete should have a ton of kids on the ground here come the middle of January and definitely by March. He's bred to most of my does. We tend to run very buckling heavy but I hope there's at least a few does.

 

[SageHill]

To focus on what we/I can do I asked if I could come and get a sample from the dam (or dams if I opt to get a second buckling) to run a full panel on before pickup. Two samples is better than one. If I can't I'll back out.

EDIT - late to the party on this - son just ignore. Soooo wow they wouldn’t let you do all the legwork and all. Way not good. Sad situation.

Thinking outside the box. …
And I don’t know anything about goats ……
Keep the reservation, test the kid - have another buyer lined up and ready that wouldn’t care about the test results. Test positive be an intermediate seller / middleman and sell to who you have lined up. Tests negative keep it. Yeah a fair amount work on the front end, but you’ve covered your bases to possibly get the line you want.

 

[rachels.haven]

EDIT - late to the party on this - son just ignore. Soooo wow they wouldn’t let you do all the legwork and all. Way not good. Sad situation.

Thinking outside the box. …
And I don’t know anything about goats ……
Keep the reservation, test the kid - have another buyer lined up and ready that wouldn’t care about the test results. Test positive be an intermediate seller / middleman and sell to who you have lined up. Tests negative keep it. Yeah a fair amount work on the front end, but you’ve covered your bases to possibly get the line you want.

I wish. She got mad that I didn't "trust" her after I asked. (...Uh, no? I've already been bitten once this year! and technically she wouldn't know if they had it or not either if no tests were done)

I actually might have a solution to my small genes problem in the wings. Maybe.

 

[Baymule]

What is “a novel wormer”?