“A day in the country is worth a month in town”Christina Rossetti

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

48 Hours Later And A Nice Surprise (Or Two)

Lucky for us we have great neighbors, and neighbors that love our goats.
Julia came twice on her school conference day to help get the orphan twins bottle fed.  Trust me. No easy task. We are not as good as mom.

Then her mom Allison came today and came up with a better technique and the twins ate twice as much as they had the first day.  Luckily, no scours (diarrhea) after 48 hours on powdered supplement. 
They are probably not getting as much as they would with mom, but we are getting used to the bottle and hopefully they will get used to the change and get easier to get started.  There is a lot of resistance, but patience is key.
After the morning shift and watching the herd come and take care of the orphans, we were closing up the barn when I looked on the hill and saw a bear walking the tree line.  As it turned out, after closer observation, he is sick with mange.
Our Game Warden was called, but of course, the bear ended his one hour nap in the sun and wandered off before he could be caught. We have the neighbors on the look out as none of us want any of our animals, or us, to share the bear's affliction.
Then just as things were settling down, Allison noticed Vinegar on her side in the corral. Yes, she was starting to kid. 
I struggled to get her out of the field with the buck, and once through the gate, she took herself into her stall. 
After a long half hour, she gave birth to a single, lovely, paint buckling.  Here she is unwrapping him!

 This evening he was fluffy and soft and a great cuddle after a long couple of days. 

6 comments:

Louvregirl said...

Wow. Now that is a busy day! Too bad about the bear. Mange can be cured so easily. We adopted two kittens with mange and just a few trips to the vet and they were cured with it never to return...

Ray955 said...

Fantastic, life goes on eh, twins doing ok and a new one just arrived.
Pity about the bear though, cant imagine what it's like to live somewhere with wild bears around. This might seem like a daft question but I'll ask it anyway because here we'd probably try to save it, what would the warden have done had the bear still been around? Darted it and tried to heal it or put it out of it's misery?

Deere Driver said...

The Warden did come with a trap with the intent to treat the bear when captured. He brought the tranquilizer rod also. Upon seeing the condition of the bear in my two or three photos, and then being able to smell its rotten scent up there as he was tracking it, led him to believe the mange was very far along. I guess its about economics too.

Ray955 said...

C'est la vie, it's not all about economics, I think respect for life also means understanding when it's coming to a natural end.

Linda Myers said...

Ah, the circle of life at your place!

bed and breakfast luray said...

This is really great. You are having good time with animals and feeding them.