The truth about homesteading is that not everything runs smooth all the time.
Don't get me wrong it IS a dream life (at least for me) but sad things happen also.
I last reported that Kimi was ill. That night I did turn on the heatlamp and kept it on since.
The next morning some stuff (food-ish) came out of her nose. Usually that means the ph of her rumen is off so I treated her for that. She should have just gotten it out of the mineral bar but animals be animals and sometimes their behaviour is just weird. I had a chicken once who did not want to eat kelp if I put the bowl on the left side of the pen, if I put it on the right side she would eat it. Weird...
Anyway Kimi did not improve over the weekend and by sunday she did display her normal behaviour again (returning to her own favorite sleeping spot and greeting me in the morning) BUT she stopped eating.
Stop eating in any herbivore is a no-no.
Needless to say I called the vet first thing this morning. It's a bit chaos at the vet right before the holidays so I can't pinpoint the time but they will be over today, possibly even this morning.
I checked the pasture again for anything poisonous I might have overlooked but found nothing. It's not in the hay either and that comes from a reliable source just down the road. They get a grass-based diet so no grain/corn/soy.
They do sneak up on the oats in summertime which grow on some spots in the pasture but they chew on the whole plant then and there is not very many of them.
I'm thinking and thinking if there is something I did wrong and how she would possibly get sick so quickly. I'm hoping the vet can shine some light on this. Kimi is still very alert, famacha score looks good, feces looked good (yesterday).
Dang it... I'm going crazy.
There is nothing worse then having a sick one, especially if you can't find the cause. If you don't know what caused it then you can't cure it and you feel very powerless.
My worst fear is that some kid threw some plastic in the field or something. For example cows eating shredded (by mowing) beer cans is a thing here.
I'll keep you updated.
Update:
The vet was here and it seems like Kimi's entire digestive tract just shut down. Food was good, housing was good, teeth were checked, there was just no explainable cause. She still had feces in her but a quick sample turned up nothing. Like I feared a foreign object in her body might be the case, if so then there is nothing you can do.
That is the worst case scenario.
Lets not assume that.
For now, what we CAN do is try to get her digestive tract running again. We got a powder to help stimulate her rumen and the vet got her a shot of painkillers to make her feel a bit better. The goal is to get her eating again, if she eats again she will feel a bit better.
While the vet was here we tried to ultrasound Ayumi but the machine had some issues so we are still in the dark about her being pregnant or not.
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I hope you can get her going. I had a horse start with food coming out of his nose as he was recovering from horse-sickness. The oedema in his chest had caused an oesophageal obstruction to form. The vet managed to get him unblocked and he recovered. Holding thumbs for you
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