Without further adieu, here is the post.
It's been a crazy morning for sure. When we showed up at the vet, he took a look and said the options were to put her down or try a c-section. He said with the way goats are with anesthesia she'd have a 50/50 shot. I said 50% is better than 0% so let's do the surgery.
I started to just drop her off and leave, still had time to make it to work on time at that point, but something made me stay and ask if I could watch the procedure. Partly because I figured they might try harder to save her if I was there and partly just so I could see how it was done and maybe gain some knowledge while I was at it. Glad I decided to stay because it was really interesting to learn more about goat anatomy and the surgeon was nice enough to describe things and give me some tips. Also a good thing I stayed because if I hadn't, we would have lost Graffiti's doeling!
She was born not breathing or moving, so the surgeon assumed she was dead and dropped her in the trash. We stood there talking for a couple of minutes while she continued working on Graffiti, and she kept exclaiming over how big the kid was. She noticed me peeking at the trash can and asked if I'd like to get a weight on the kid to see how big she was. So I fished her out of the trash and took her over to the scale. She was completely cold and limp, but when I sat her on the scale she twitched and I could see a strong heartbeat despite the fact that she was still not breathing.
I told the vet and she was totally surprised. She apologized repeatedly and called a vet tech over to take her to the back to try to revive her. Within minutes she had started breathing erratically and bleating. After about an hour she was breathing more regularly and hollering at us to quit bugging her so much (we were rubbing and pestering her to get her to breath).
She had a really low temp so we put her on heating pads at the vet and at home. She is up to 101.2* now so she's off the pad and laying next to her momma. I tube-fed her some colostrum right after we got home, and just fed some more milk a couple mins ago. She looks a lot better, though she is still too weak to stand. Graffiti is sore but looks okay and was able to walk to the kidding stall by herself. She has already started bonding with her baby despite the kid coming out the side door instead of the normal route. She has been nuzzling and licking her, which is just adorable. Can't believe we beat the odds and brought them both home alive!
This is Graffiti, at the vet recovering from surgery. She was just waking up from anesthesia and her baby had finally gotten to where she was breathing well enough to take her off the oxygen mask. We laid the baby next to her and she immediately perked up and brought her head around to start licking and nuzzling her. The girls at the vet clinic where gushing over how cute they were together and taking pics on their cell phones.** Edited to Add - 4/7/2012 **
Sad to report that baby Treasure passed away this morning a little after 6am. Still not sorry I pulled her out of the trash. Despite the short time we had with her, she is leaving a big hole in our hearts.
Thank you Cynthia for sharing this story online and allowing us to post about it.
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