Thursday, November 3, 2011

What happened to Billy!?!?

Well... I don't know.
What he looked like last night

The goats & Billy frequently duck under the back fence (naughty creatures!) to come run around and eat all the grass on the lawn. We just let it go because we're going to fix the fence next year anyway, they don't wander off anywhere (no where for them to go) and they come when you call. Plus, we don't have to cut the lawn...

I was in & out of the farm yesterday with the meat birds, and when I went out to put the goats/Billy away for the night, Harry & Diego were already in their stall but Billy was nowhere to be seen. So I called him, and hear him come baaing from out in the garden. So he comes trotting in, at which point I notice he's missing part of his face!!

This is what Billy normally looks like
So it looks like his left horn that normally points down has been ripped right off. I have NO Idea how this happened, or where it happened. He's also got a little cut on his forehead. The only guess I have is that he got wrapped up in the fence somewhere and pulled it off trying to get out, but that is only a guess. I never heard him bleat for help, or noticed he was missing until I called them in.

The Scene!
The stump wasn't bleeding when I first saw him, but my efforts to "clean it up" lead to him spurting all over the back deck. All the while nosing around looking for grain... So I applied pressure until it stopped, then ran in & grabbed the corn starch and it did stop. Then it was iodine to cover the whole thing. At this point I had to wait until hubby got home to hold him (thankfully he was already close!). Hubs held billy, I placed an old towel over his eye & applied the liquid bandage. So now he's sparkley...

I kept him in Meg's stall over night so the goats wouldn't bump him, but let them out in the back-section of the barn so they could see each other. (Horses were outside).

He's outside running around with the crew today, in fact I just caught him on the wrong side of the fence! Looks like it might have been bleeding a little bit, but over-all looks okay...

What a day!

We were just going to leave things alone with the fence, but I'm going to investigate if we have some more tape-clips for the t-posts (and I'm pretty sure we do) and we'll run another string this weekend so they can't duck under the fence any more. There is a chance he did it somewhere else on the farm too, I'm just hoping this never happens again!

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