Wednesday night was beautiful. It was the last hurrah of warm weather with the temperatures reaching 80 degrees! This meant the bucks were out enjoying the warm weather and foraging. Unfortunately the last overgrown area on our property that I have been rotating them around is on top of a hill, which makes leading two full grown bucks in rut down a hill kind of challenging. I asked Rob who was outside with me to come help me bring the bucks down to their house. This is not his favorite task, because the bucks have their own very pungent and specific aroma at this time that no matter how hard you try it seems to permeate everything around the bucks even if they are only there for a few minutes. It also doesn't help that our buck Turbo is quite the Romeo.... He uses everything he has to try to convince Rob that he is a handsome devil that requires all of the does for himself.
This being said, I offered to lead Turbo while Rob lead Branson, our much better mannered buck. All of the does who follow us like a herd of dogs were on the hillside happily munching on fallen leaf chips and anything else they could find. As Rob was leading Branson, Stella came over and was wagging her tail... a sure sign that she is in heat. Rob asked about letting them breed and I said no, I just bred Zoey and I would wait till her next heat cycle to space the kidding out a bit for my sanity. This is when the night became even more interesting.... Branson's collar slipped over his head while he was being lead down the hill. He has a massive neck and a much smaller head, so I have a hard time getting collars that fit him well..... I quickly tied Turbo to a tree and ran to grab Branson before he could breed any of the girls, luckily I got to him before he got to the girls. As I prepared myself to grab my buck who is in full rut, I looked and saw what looked like something out of a horror movie! There was blood spraying everywhere! I frantically looked Branson over to try to find the source to stop it! Not only is he a sweet buck, but he is the cornerstone of my breeding plan this fall! I cannot loose him! After what felt like an hour of searching, but in reality was only a few moments, I found the culprit! Branson had gotten cut deeply by a thorn on his manhood and because it is such a vascular area it was spurting blood!
I yelled to Rob, this may sound weird, but I am going to hold pressure on this to stop the bleeding! Go get my goat emergency kit! It's in the barn hanging up! As he high tailed it to the barn I took stock of the situation... Here I was on the hillside in the woods, near dark with my buck, covered in his blood and "buck must", holding his collar with one hand and controlling his bleeding with another... Rob came running back over with the kit, and I quickly found the blood stop powder and the antibiotic cream. Thankfully, the bleeding was quickly quelled with the magic of blood stop powder and I made my way over to the buck's house to clean myself and Branson up! He impressed me, he did not seem to be bothered by the cut whatsoever,
and went right to eating his grain and if you looked at him today you would never know that we had such an eventful evening with him just a few days ago! The moral of the story is, keep your bucks in rut away from thorns! Happy Goating!
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