Those of you that are close to me know that our life situation has changed quite a bit lately. My husband went from working from home exclusively with very little travel, to being 100% contract based with very high travel. This means that our routines in life have changed drastically with him traveling five weeks of the last six. Anyone with a family, farm and full-time job know the tasks, planning, and effort it takes to make daily life go on. It also changes the dynamic of responsibility, as we split childcare between us and our sitter during working times. Thankfully, our sitter has been amazing and has stepped up for significantly more hours and care for our daughter, I truly could not do what I am doing without her. This also means that our days look a lot different, when I would usually do chores with Avery only in the morning. I now take her out morning and night, which means even in this extreme cold we have been experiencing, I have a tricycle riding 2-year-old accompanying me. This as you can imagine has added to both the stress and the fun of each day. Avery has now seen me ultrasound our goats and a friend's goats a few times, so now she pretends that everything she has is an ultrasound wand that she needs to put gel on!!
Overall, it's been a positive experience, where I have applied my skills of critical thinking, independence and we have been able to stay connected as a family through the wonders of video chatting. For those of you following up on Trudy's saga of health, she seems to be fully recovered and from what I can see on ultrasound seems to have retained her pregnancy. I assume it was a case of Polio, which I have never had in an adult goat, but we were able to get her through it with supportive care of meloxicam, thiamine, nuflor and probiotics. This past week though the goats have tested me. Within a 24-hour span, I had my most promising doe kid show signs of poisoning, which I treated with activated charcoal, and she recovered, and my only wether, get into a bag of chicken feed from the wind blowing a shed door open. I treated him with baking soda, meloxicam, activated charcoal and probiotics and thankfully by the morning he had improved. Finally, my bucks decided to test my resolve, by somehow breaking their heated water buckets prongs off inside of the outlet! Thankfully, I knew where the breaker was, and I was able to turn it off, fish the broken prongs out of the outlet with needle nose pliers and everything was well. I am so glad it did not cause a fire, or any worse outcomes. I was lucky in the fact that I had purchased the warranty on the bucket from TSC, so I was able to get a replacement for free!
One thing is for sure, goats and farming keep you on your toes even if I can't always feel my toes really cold days caring for them. I hope you are all staying warm and getting prepared for the holiday ahead! Take care and Happy Goating!
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