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It could have turned out much worse

802 Views 13 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  mzgarden
I'll share as a 'lesson learned' in case it helps anyone else.
We keep a baby monitor in the barn in case of...whatever. We have goat kids in the barn during the day with their moms.
One of our pens is not being used but the gate has been left opened to give everyone more space, and in that pen is a metal hay feeder hanging on one wall. When the girls are in advanced pregnancy, they use this pen. Now, the hay feeder is left empty to keep chickens out of it. This morning we heard a distressed yelling - clearly a different sound. I ran down the lane with my shoes half on and no coat, in the pouring rain to find one of the goat kids had somehow hung himself up in that empty hay feeder. He got his head in where the slats are farther apart, slid down and was now hanging. He was easy to get out, I calmed him down and his mom checked him over. No injury, but had I not been home, had I not had the monitor in the barn, he would have hung there until he died.
That pen gate is now closed and locked. Lesson learned - don't make my mistake.

Edited later -- with more time now, we simply removed the feeder from the wall and stored it up in the barn loft.
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Goats are so good at showing us the error of our ways.

When we very first acquired goats (one doe, one buckling), the little buckling was eager to show me the flaw in my milking stand design, by catching his foreleg in a space on the stanchion and snapping the bone right in two.

That was the day (morning, actually, about 2 a.m.) we learned how to splint a broken leg. Thank God that DH sleeps so light, or he'd have been dead by the time I woke up.

Have to think like a goat in order to protect the goats.
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We had a kid get it’s head stuck in a feeder (as pictured below)
Instead of trying to pull it‘s head back, she tried to escape by going forward like a snake. She had a full recovery but a bit traumatizing for the kid and my wife who performed the rescue.

View attachment 119028
Wow!

We have used this type of feeder for 14 years, never had a problem. But we will be keeping a close eye on them now!
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