Butchered a goat today. One of the three little doelings I ended up with about 6 wks ago when a neighbor showed up at my house one morning at 9 AM and said "Take my animals, I'm leaving town-now!"
There were 8 goats and 18 pigs. Go the pigs farmed out, and 5 of the the goats, but got stuck with the little ones. Grade dairy doe mixes. Figured I could keep them and use a Boer on them if nothing else, my big pasture really needs critters to eat it down. Until I got more registered stock, they could earn their keep.
I kept these three in quarantine until I had them vacinated, dewormed (twice, they were pretty scrawny) and tested. Unfortunately-all three came back CAE positive.
One had an uneven udder and kinda largish looking knees for her age.
We may have a home as brush-eaters for the asymptomatic doelings, but we decided to butcher the one that looked like she was symptomatic. I had the chance to do it today at a friends house who had the equpment and experience, so it was good learning opportunity. One of the older does that I had given way seemed to have a small uterine prolapse, plus was constantly trying to go thru the fence, getting caught and injured. So she went to freezer camp too today and we all learned how to process them.
It went pretty well. No signs of worms in the intestines, and none of the whitish bumps on them that Vicki has described as evidence of cocci damage. But here were some interesting marks on her liver that the older doe did not have. Since this is the first time Ive done it, Ive never seen freshly butchered liver before to know wether its normal or not. I'd guess not if one goat had it and the other didnt.
There were about 5 beige rounded bumps (barely raised when i felt them) scattered in different areas of the liver, about the size of a small pencil eraser (actually probably a bit smaller). Surrounded by a multitude of small beige dots. I did take a picture but it did not come out, it was too dark under the shed and the auto thingy didnt work on that and a couple of others.
I have no idea what liver flukes look like, when youre looking at the surface of the liver. But they didnt appear to be obvious worms or anything, just bumps. I wanted to investigate it further by cutting into them and cutting up the liver to see if there were more insode, but forgot and by the time I got back outside from washing up the meat, DH had already fed the innards to the pigs. So now I cant check them out further.
Anyone know what they might be? Scar tissue, worms or something else? The past owner was worming with ivermectin, and something else that he gave me that is a yellow liquid (in a canning jar, no label) that he referred to (quite ingeniously, I thought) as the "yellow wormer". Other than that, he hadnt given them any immunizations or meds or anything.
There were 8 goats and 18 pigs. Go the pigs farmed out, and 5 of the the goats, but got stuck with the little ones. Grade dairy doe mixes. Figured I could keep them and use a Boer on them if nothing else, my big pasture really needs critters to eat it down. Until I got more registered stock, they could earn their keep.
I kept these three in quarantine until I had them vacinated, dewormed (twice, they were pretty scrawny) and tested. Unfortunately-all three came back CAE positive.
One had an uneven udder and kinda largish looking knees for her age. We may have a home as brush-eaters for the asymptomatic doelings, but we decided to butcher the one that looked like she was symptomatic. I had the chance to do it today at a friends house who had the equpment and experience, so it was good learning opportunity. One of the older does that I had given way seemed to have a small uterine prolapse, plus was constantly trying to go thru the fence, getting caught and injured. So she went to freezer camp too today and we all learned how to process them.
It went pretty well. No signs of worms in the intestines, and none of the whitish bumps on them that Vicki has described as evidence of cocci damage. But here were some interesting marks on her liver that the older doe did not have. Since this is the first time Ive done it, Ive never seen freshly butchered liver before to know wether its normal or not. I'd guess not if one goat had it and the other didnt.
There were about 5 beige rounded bumps (barely raised when i felt them) scattered in different areas of the liver, about the size of a small pencil eraser (actually probably a bit smaller). Surrounded by a multitude of small beige dots. I did take a picture but it did not come out, it was too dark under the shed and the auto thingy didnt work on that and a couple of others.
I have no idea what liver flukes look like, when youre looking at the surface of the liver. But they didnt appear to be obvious worms or anything, just bumps. I wanted to investigate it further by cutting into them and cutting up the liver to see if there were more insode, but forgot and by the time I got back outside from washing up the meat, DH had already fed the innards to the pigs. So now I cant check them out further.
Anyone know what they might be? Scar tissue, worms or something else? The past owner was worming with ivermectin, and something else that he gave me that is a yellow liquid (in a canning jar, no label) that he referred to (quite ingeniously, I thought) as the "yellow wormer". Other than that, he hadnt given them any immunizations or meds or anything.
