26 Mar 2008
Blitzen the One Horned Wonder Goat

With all the flu that's been going on here, I'm afraid I was remiss in not mentioning the events of last Tuesday (the 18th), which was a rather extraordinary day indeed.

It started off sedate enough, but the situation began to deteriorate about 11, when Stubby had our first lamb of the season.

I was at work, Lorraine wasn't feeling up to par, and it was pouring rain to boot. Stubby was in the side stall, and as the rain increased in intensity, the entire flock joined her. Then Hammer came in. Then the two remaining cows, and finally the goats. It was pretty crowded, and our new little ram lamb was in some danger of being squished on his first day here.

So Lorraine climbed over into the zoo, and managed to get Stubby and her new boy into the big stall in the main area of the barn. It was a mess, to say the least, and Blitzen took this opportunity to vault through a wooded and mesh fence feeding stanchion and into the foyer of the barn - with all the remaining hay!

She called me at about 11 and asked if I could come home for lunch, just to check out the new arrival and help her get things back to some semblance of order. No problem - I got here about 11:45.

It was when trying to get Blitzen back out to the pasture (she'd gotten him into another stall with Francie, our doe goat) that I noticed something was amiss with his right side. There seemed to be blood on his face! Ack!

He had torn his horn nearly off when he jumped through the fence, and was bleeding pretty badly. The horn was still hanging on, but barely. I'd never had to deal with anything like this before!

A quick gander through the books, and a call to the vet, told us that we had to remove the rest of the horn and stop the bleeding. To make a long story short, that's exactly what we managed - after many loops around the barn with poor Blitzen spraying blood everywhere, and much agony on his part when I used the hacksaw to cut through the tenderest part of his horn that was still attached.

We got his head wrapped with some vet tape, and I went into town to get a couple of extra bags of feed for the new momma (and Blitzen, whom I was pretty sure would be confined for a bit). I also picked up some BloodStop powder. Good thing, too, because his bleeding, while it slowed, was not stopped by the pressure wrap. The powder did stop it (and probably saved his life) but not until after a couple more laps around the barn, spraying goat blood. Yuk!

It was 4:30pm by the time I got back to work after "lunch" (I can't remember if I ate anything or not). And, sorry, but no pictures - I just can't bring myself to take one yet. He looks utterly ridiculous with only one horn. But I'll embarrass him here with some nice profile shots sometime this summer ... after his attack of stupidity last Tuesday, he deserves it!

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