Goats Trying to Kill Themselves

[nehimama]

I have found that, no matter how pristine and safe you think your goats' home is, they WILL find a way to try and kill themselves. I have also learned to use something other than rubber tarp straps anywhere near the goats. The next two stories involve rubber tarp straps:

#1 involves young goats running around their paddock, and jumping up on the fence from time to time, actually running for a few feet sideways on the fence! One young lady jumped up on the fence, but underestimated her leap, and went OVER the fence. There was a very short tarp strap hanging down on the other side of the fence, and she caught a hind leg in the curve of the "s" hook. Fortunately, I was there and saw it all. I was able to lift her by her back leg and extricate her (ankle?) from the hook and free her. In appreciation, she bit me.

#2 is another "s" hook incident. I had a rubber tarp strap used to keep the door to a small pen open. Next to the door is a wooden box, which the young goats love to climb on. This particular day, the strap wasn't holding the door open, and it was hanging loose. Curious goats, ya know, have to mouth everything. This young doe was mouthing the "s" hook, slipped off the wooden box and was hung up like a fish, with the hook piercing her upper lip. I was in the house, and heard the hollering. I freed her and was dismayed at the long gash in her lip. It healed nicely, but she did have trouble for a while with the bottle.

The moral? I don't use rubber tarp straps around the goats any more!

Has anything like this happened with your goats? I'll bet there are plenty of stories out there!

NeHi

[Minelson]

Frankie got trapped in a folding chair. I heard this hollering coming from the barn, ran to look and Frankie was trapped with one of the chair legs folded right on his neck in a choke hold. His "mama", Gretta, was standing right on top of it! I think she thought she was helping. No injuries thank goodness

[Alice In TX/MO]

Last year:
We had a large round bale with a tarp over it and a couple of bungee cords keeping the tarp from blowing off. One of the doelings got hung in the bungee cord. Luckily we saw her and rescued her immediately.

[KimM]

My friend's Boer goat doe (older baby) was also mouthing an s-hook on a rubber tarp strap and she started walking up to her to take the strap away (hanging on a gate) when the goat took off and ripped the entire side of her mouth open. Her mouth was suddenly another 4 inches wider. EEWWWW!!! My friend thought she have to put the doe down, she couldn't catch her to treat her. the doe ended up healing just fine but EEWWWW!!! She doesn't leave bungees anywhere near the goats anymore.

[jil101ca]

*off to barn to put bungee cords away that are hanging on a stall*

[nehimama]

Originally Posted by Minelson

Frankie got trapped in a folding chair. I heard this hollering coming from the barn, ran to look and Frankie was trapped with one of the chair legs folded right on his neck in a choke hold. His "mama", Gretta, was standing right on top of it! I think she thought she was helping. No injuries thank goodness

LOL! I think I remember you telling us about this incident. If it weren't so scary, it'd be downright funny!

NeHi

[Jcran]

I had about 200 carabiner clips from a SAFE AND SOBER GRAD party. Free and wonderful. I used one to clip a gate chain. I had a goat mouth it and get it stuck in her mouth. She was hooked to the gate like aforementioned fish. My daughter noticed she was "hanging out" at the gate awful close and investigated...needless to say it was the one WILD goat in the bunch. She was not as grateful as we'd hoped and then she got what we thought was an abcess at the spot. When we wrestled her down, we found she'd managed to pierce her lip! So now she dresses in black boots and wants to listen to Goth music all the time, geesh!

[jesse300]

I thought we were talking about goats Jcran.

[DQ]

they sometimes seem intent on hurting themselves.


I recently had two doelings that decide to cram both there heads through a spot at the edge of a cattle panel. they of course were stuck. as I was trying to extract them one yanked her head back and ripped her lower eyelid almost completely off. ackk. I couldn't bear to hardly look at it! I am not squeamish but somehow that flap of eyelid was excruciating to see. I consulted with my dh and said its either a vet trip or a bullet. my tearful daughter pleaded for the vet. she couldn't close her eye so off to the vet we went to spend 3x as much at the vet as the stupid doeling was worth.....

yesterday my yearling boer buck decided that he was quite comfortable climbing the cattle panels like a ladder and offering his services to the ladies. I stuck an ad on craigslist first then I put him in a different paneled area hoping that he wouldn't be quite so keen on climbing a fence that was wobbly-er (temporary pen). well I watched the dummy climb it, stick a back leg through, get it wrapped around the hot wire fence a foot outside the pen, fall off and dangle from the hotwire wrapped around his back leg. i have to admit. I let him get shocked several times (intermittent charge)before I ran over to the box and flipped it off. and I even said "take that!" a few times. I was hoping that he would learn a lesson about how climbing fences was not such a hot idea. didn't work anyone want a paint boer yearling buck?

[LaManchaPaul]

Originally Posted by DQ

they sometimes seem intent on hurting themselves.


I recently had two doelings that decide to cram both there heads through a spot at the edge of a cattle panel. they of course were stuck. as I was trying to extract them one yanked her head back and ripped her lower eyelid almost completely off. ackk. I couldn't bear to hardly look at it! I am not squeamish but somehow that flap of eyelid was excruciating to see. I consulted with my dh and said its either a vet trip or a bullet. my tearful daughter pleaded for the vet. she couldn't close her eye so off to the vet we went to spend 3x as much at the vet as the stupid doeling was worth.....

yesterday my yearling boer buck decided that he was quite comfortable climbing the cattle panels like a ladder and offering his services to the ladies. I stuck an ad on craigslist first then I put him in a different paneled area hoping that he wouldn't be quite so keen on climbing a fence that was wobbly-er (temporary pen). well I watched the dummy climb it, stick a back leg through, get it wrapped around the hot wire fence a foot outside the pen, fall off and dangle from the hotwire wrapped around his back leg. i have to admit. I let him get shocked several times (intermittent charge)before I ran over to the box and flipped it off. and I even said "take that!" a few times. I was hoping that he would learn a lesson about how climbing fences was not such a hot idea. didn't work anyone want a paint boer yearling buck?

And he said, "Hey Lady, HEY YOU!! Step lively would you?" hehe "I'll try this again later to see if she learned how to move faster. Some humans are hard to train."

[gone-a-milkin]

A goat can even get itself nearly murdered by a 5 gallon bucket. If they get their head through the bail and stand in the bucket with both front feet, and then thash around until they fall down...you can be sure that any other goats in the pen will come over and ram at the bucket and dance on the down goat.

One thing about goats though, they have voices that are hard to ignore. If they couldn't scream bloody murder at every , well, bloody murder...there would be a lot fewer goats around.

[nehimama]

Originally Posted by gone-a-milkin

A goat can even get itself nearly murdered by a 5 gallon bucket. If they get their head through the bail and stand in the bucket with both front feet, and then thash around until they fall down...you can be sure that any other goats in the pen will come over and ram at the bucket and dance on the down goat.

One thing about goats though, they have voices that are hard to ignore. If they couldn't scream bloody murder at every , well, bloody murder...there would be a lot fewer goats around.

OH . . . MY . . . . GOODNESS ! ! ! I laughed out loud!

*goes out to remove all 5-gallon buckets from the goat pens*

NeHi

[DQ]

Originally Posted by LaManchaPaul

And he said, "Hey Lady, HEY YOU!! Step lively would you?" hehe "I'll try this again later to see if she learned how to move faster. Some humans are hard to train."

hahaha. well, honestly in this case I don't think there is a whole lot going on in his head. he has a reputation for being rather dull, any bright ideas he has are strictly coming from his nether regions. very sweet, non aggressive easy to handle...but not the sharpest tool in the shed. I did feel a little bad and was momentarily worried that he was going to break his leg.......but since he got out and bred two does maybe three...... I wasn't feeling particularly sympathetic at the time. especially cause I am preggers myself and I will have to go through the hassle of finding someone to lute them for me......

the buck and the doeling both had the nicknames dummy 1 and dummy 2 before any of this even happened! some of them are just especially...stupid.

[DQ]

forgot to mention....dummy one (doeling) had a bucket stuck on her dead once......she was just wandering around so I watched for a minute.....just as I was going out there to "save" her I watched her take her head out of the bucket...scratch her ear and then put it back on and continue to wander around with it!!!!???????? bizarre.

[Minelson]

Originally Posted by DQ

forgot to mention....dummy one (doeling) had a bucket stuck on her dead once......she was just wandering around so I watched for a minute.....just as I was going out there to "save" her I watched her take her head out of the bucket...scratch her ear and then put it back on and continue to wander around with it!!!!???????? bizarre.

That is really REALLY bizarre!

[Pony]

We learned the hard way that goats will do everything they can to demonstrate how unsafely you built their quarters.

Bow Tie got his leg caught in the milking stand I built, showing us exactly where they was an open spot, PERFECT for a buckling to break his foreleg.

But Many Troubles is the worst. She demonstrated a spiral fracture by catching her leg in the crotch of a tree she was climbing.

I'm looking into making bubble wrap suits for these goats. They break too easily!

[garyh141]

We had one try the bucket trick. Had her head caught under the handle. When I tried to approach this normally tame goat, she ran, causing the bucket to swing back and forth, which scared her and made her even wilder. Luckily, it was an empty bucket.
Had a goat get her whole head caught in a homemade hay manger (still can't figure out how she did it). We had to disassemble it to get her out. We heard the commotion, but just thought they wanted to eat earlier than regular time so we didn't check on them. When we got her out, she was royally ticked. Mad at everybody and everything in the barnyard.
We had round 55-gallon barrels lined up side by side with a regular square house next to them. Was awakened one morning with crying (again, thinking they just wanted fed) but the crying got a little bit more excited. One of the babies had fallen down between the square house and the round barrel and couldn't get turned back over. Her 4 little feet were just pumping in the air.
All these things are funny now, but at the time...of course, we too learn the hard way and they always find these safety issues before we do. (Sandra)

[motdaugrnds]

Well, I have a few funny stories and a few scary ones too. When I first started raising goats, I went to choose a white one I had seen advertised. A black one chose me instead! I then went over to a different farm and bought another goat who did not want to come with me at all. (We had a terrible time getting her into my extended van.)

At the time I had started my barn; however, it was not ready to house goats; so I placed collars on the two grown does and chained them to a large shade tree with a tarp for extra covering in case of a rain. (It was summer time and even when it did rain, the rain was warm; so I wasn't really worried at the time.) The black one would notice me immediately when I was outside and would yell at me to come be with her. Since I was busy, I could not tend to her; so she yelled louder. The carpenter who was putting the roof on the first portion of my barn stopped and just watched her as she started pulling a temper tantrum, getting louder and louder with her calling me. She accidentally stepped in her bucket of water and spilled it. The carpenter told me he could not keep a straight face as it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. She stopped yelling, looked down at the spilled water then looked over to where I was working and made the loudest and strangest noise she could as if to say, "Now look what you made me do!"

After I had had these does a few years, this one who had spilled her water, saved me from an attacking dog. She butted that dog 4 times before it stopped pouncing on me. (I was not badly hurt.) In the pasture she often slept with her head in my lap.

The other doe became my helper when I trimmed hooves. She would literally stand around talking and, if need be, butting other goats to keep them still while I trimmed hooves. She gave birth to a beautiful son one year and I made the mistake of leaving his horns on until I discovered the hard way this was not wise. Then I had the vet come out and take them off. A few months later he was going to let me know he did not like me much and started to butt me; but his mother talked to him. He stopped, looked at her and then backed away. I have no doubt she told him, "You better watch it! She might take your head off next time."

OMG I could go on and on with the wonderful things my small herd of dairy goats have done. I even have a video of a 4-month old buckling teaching a 2-month old buckling how to jump up on his front legs and come down to butt.

[garyh141]

motdaugrnds, I would love to see that video! (Sandra)