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| Rhoda, a Rhode Island Red, who is NOT on a diet. |
Our 150 year old barn has dirt floors, which has positives and negatives. It is easier on the legs of the animals, and absorbs some of the smell and moisture. 
But its dirt. How do you keep dirt clean? Well, we try to be as vigilant as possible with a daily clean up of wet materials and big poop piles. We try to get the wet areas covered with bedding to keep things solid, but sometimes that's hard. 
So once a month or so, we take everything down to the dirt, trying to get every poop pebble, or berry, as some call them, out of the barn. Can you see the hen above checking for edibles? They follow my trail every morning checking out the places I expose after I scrape the floors. They scratch some more looking for snacks.
Then we lime the floor to neutralize odors and kill some of the eggs and whatever nasties are in the dirt. We let the lime sit till we are ready to bring everyone in, and cover it with clean, thick bedding. In the summer, I think this helps keep the flea and fly population down also. I can't tell you how many wheel barrow's full we emptied this week-end, but I'm glad its done for a while.
Doing it in this snowy, sloppy weather through mud made it all the more fun too. 
Look at these dirty little goats.
Trimming hooves is one of those tasks that I was told by several goat owners I would only need to do twice a year. Well not with my Zola, and I am feeling quite guilty that I didn't come home and immediately give her a pedicure. 
A board was set up with frozen legs and the feet from the morning's lambs for us to practice on. We got to use several clippers and even large snips. I notice that Dr. Wolfgang got to handle all of the sharp objects during the class!
At home, I use a pair of Fiskars garden pruners that have rounded tips. I was recommended to be cautious with sharp points for the animal, as well as myself. I'd say it is a good recommendation, as sometimes you are not working on level ground and the animals move, so there are many ways to draw blood. 
The nice thing about using the frozen feet is that you could trim too far to see what you were trying to avoid. The feet from the morning actually still bled a little if we went too far, so that was a good lesson. 
My goat poop samples for the fecal egg count. 
Nematodirus slide that I was able to photograph through the scope. 
Dr. Van Saun relaying the absolutes in life.
Robert Van Saun, DVM, Penn State Extension Veterinarian and Professor of Veterinary Science, specializes in small ruminant pregnancy nutrition and its influence on health, production and reproduction; metabolic diseases and their prevention; and preventive medicine programs.
Trimming hooves article. There are many to find. There are even videos online.
On-line Manual for Conducting Fecal Egg Counts
Diagnosis of Internal Parasitism in Goats - Good reference from Langston University for identifying parasites and more about the procedure.
I am putting the class pictures up in a couple of blogs, partly because some of you have your kids checking out the pictures with you. Here is the bloodier one. This will be interesting to some, but perhaps not to all. It was extremely educational to myself and the class participants. All of these activities tied together and made a lot of sense as a whole, and I recommend this experience to others.
The first thing we did, was check the condition of the animal. We donned gloves and felt along the spine. It was determined that this animal was a two, on a scale of one to five - five being chunky.
Of interest is the structure of the inside of the mouth. As you can clearly see, the teeth are only on the bottom, with quite a palette on the top. You wonder how those goats can eat what they do with mouth like that.
The first cuts took the breath away from a few onlookers, and then the fascination began. Early into this seminar, we talked about using injections without causing scar tissue and also maximizing the benefit to the animals. We talked about how to use needles, and where to give medications subcutaneously (sub Q) and inter muscularly. Understanding proper injection sites is important for meat goat quality assurance.
Dr. Wolfgang did a very neat job of skinning this lamb. There was little smell, and Hannah sopped up the blood as much as possible. A few real bleeders were clamped off. 
The intestines and digestive compartments. We eventually opened up some of these compartments to look at their contents. We could see where the further digested food moved along and became more smooth and watery as it proceeded. The digestive system is quite machine.
Opening the chest cavity. 
This animal was chosen because it appeared to be in poorer health. For the purposes of finding and studying parasites, this was a good choice.
The female reproductive organs. Holding an ovary (I think) and the uterine horns below the finger.
The rumen, intestines (behind right), liver, and the lungs (pink).
Everything is generally "clean" looking.
Close up of the rumen. 
Intestines. 
The lining of the rumen and its contents. 
You can see some corn in the rumen, and the texture of the inside of the lining. I missed getting a good picture of the reticulum with its honeycomb pattern, but I attached a good reference about ruminant digestive anatomy here.
In an environment where antibiotics are omnipresent, as they are in
industrial agriculture, antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases quickly
develop, reducing the effectiveness of common drugs like penicillin and
tetracycline.
Oh! Hello! My name is Jake.
Let me come over for a serious talk about my chickens.
These girls are Bovan hybrids that lay pretty, fat, brown eggs. People rave about the eggs all of the time. 
And I have to say, they are doing me a favor.
The more they eat, the less I re-digest as I graze.
So the less I have to get that apple flavored medicine paste that the humans think is funny when I get it stuck all over my mouth.
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