Troy did not make it.. Andrea called and his kidneys were shutting down. His bladder could not function because his kidneys were not even able to produce the urine. I told Andrea to put him to sleep as he did not need to suffer.
We will miss Troy very much! He was such a character and such a big personality. He loved to nibble on your clothing any chance he could get and he loved to lick the salt off my arms. But he hated his ears touched and we'd play a game of him grabbing my shirt while I grabbed his ears!
This has been a learning experience for us and we will take what we can and hopefully do more to protect the 3 goats we still have. Troy had some things going against him that didnt help, such as a penis about 1/4 the size of an average penis! This definately is a problem when stones are developed and we'll hope that our other 3 goats have an average or above average dingaling to help avoid this problem. Andrea also investigated after he was put to sleep and his bladder had sprung another leak and was turning black, and inside his bladder were hundreds of stones, one bigger than the original blockage, so it was only a matter of time for this to happen to him again.
The other issue is that typically they can develop stones from Alfalfa hay and grain, but I am not feeding either of these, nor have I all year. He's been on pasture all year with no other feed other than sticker bushes and weeds. According to Andrea, when they develop stones it is generally a calcium-phosphorous imbalance, which is what Troy's stone was and it was most likely caused from a weed in his pasture. So we'll have to research that a little more to determine which weed and probably pull the other goats off the field and bring them home sooner than later as our home pasture only has grass, no weeds.
Here are some pics in chronological order of Troy as he grew with us!
The first 2 pictures were taken the day we brought him home in August 2005.... Echo is his best friend and will surely miss Troy too.
The picture of Troy in the tree was taken March 2006
And the snow pictures were taken March 2007
Then the final picture taken in June 2008
A couple of random cropped head shot pictures..
No comments:
Post a Comment