Bad animal week

We are not doing well with our animals recently. Tom has been home sick and yesterday went out to the barn to find our young pygmy wether Earl dead. The day before he had been acting a little odd in that he was in the pasture when the other goats were in the barn, but then he came running and chowed down on hay like usual so I didn’t think much of it. This is our 4th adult goat in less than 2 months. Tom had to take him to the vet for a necropsy, and nothing has come up so far. I wormed all the goats and all the sheep I could catch while I was waiting for the news but no parasites or infection could be detected. They have access to the best mineral salt I can find, rain water and good quality grass hay. One was in a pen so I don’t think there’s poisoning involved. So it’s scary not knowing what to do. There will be toxicology results back next week that might give us an answer.

Then this morning I found one of our red Satin Angora does dead, Thelma. It is so sad since she was such a beautiful rabbit and made gorgeous babies. She had a tilt head for one day so I expected she was pretty sick.

When I was going to bury these two animals I found my car looking a complete mess. The dogs apparently were biting and scratching on it last night- it appears they were trying to get to some animal that was on the hood and under the car. They produced more than $2500 in damage according to the estimate we just got. They bit up the bumper and grill and scratched up the hood, fenders and door. I have definitely been thinking about getting rid of them today, but we need them to keep the coyotes away from our farm and to guard our house. So I am not sure what the solution is yet.

So a bad animal week.

2008-01-10 02:44:32 GMT

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