The second goat kid born to Spot at the end of April was too weak to stay with his mother. When we brought him back home to bottle feed him and raise him by hand, we did not have high hopes of a recovery. The kid, named Whinnie by supporters of the Whinnies Community Garden where we keep our animals, turned out to be a bit of a fighter. Nevertheless, before today we had not been able to get him to stand on his feet. We had built him a harness but that didn't really do the job. Earlier this week, he seemed to be worse and I was contemplating giving him to the end of this week to see if he was going to recover or else we may have to consider putting him down.
Today, he managed to get onto his feet. He was very wobbly. He fell over a few times and he propped himself up against the settee a bit, but he was actually on his feet. We are not out of the woods yet but I am much more hopeful that he will make a full recovery.
And at that point we have a problem. He was breed for slaughter but we have invested so much time and effort and resources in keeping him alive and helping him to recover that sending him for slaughter later this year is not something we really want to do. We can't however keep him with our little herd of goats as we already have a billy. So we are looking for solutions and a possible new home for him.
1 comment:
Yes, it is a bit of a problem when you get attached to your animals. I hope that the issue with the weakness in the legs isn't genetic.
Post a Comment