Introducing Crockett!

In the truck on the way home!  We crossed several state lines to get this boy.

 First a quick lesson for the less than goat savvy people.  Our does are Boer crosses.  Our new buck Crocket is a Myotonic Goat (Tennessee Fainting Goat).  The Myotonic is well known for being a heavily muscled breed.  When bred to a Boer, you get a bigger framed, faster growing, heavily muscled goat.  Myotonics have a hereditary condition called myotonia congenita which causes the muscles to stiffen briefly when the animal is startled and can cause them to fall over, hence why they are called fainting goats.  They don't really faint though.  They are conscious the whole time and it is painless.  Well, I tried to keep it brief.  Just introducing you to the breed if you are unfamiliar.

So we had been considering a Myotonic herd sire to cross with our Boers for a while and finally took the plunge.  We went looking for a Myotonic buckling because a purebred is expensive around here, but during our searching we came across Crockett for a third of the price!  He is six years old and registered.  He has a show history that spans several states.  He's sired a lot of really nice offspring that are winning in the show ring.  He comes from foundation lines of his breed.  The reason he was so cheap is because he was injured at one time, so one leg is crooked and he has arthritis in both front legs.  If you look closely in the above picture you can see how calloused his knees are.  The arthritis doesn't prevent him from breeding, but it does lower his value.

 You can see how tall he is here.  Hubby is almost 5'10".

I  don't care about his ugly, damaged knees.  He has amazing lineage and is a really nice quality, proven sire.  The only thing I was terrified of is that he might have Caprine Encephalitis Arthritis (CAE) which causes arthritis symptoms and is contagious to other goats through blood, milk and apparently breeding too.  It can eventually cause paralysis.  So we kept him quarantined the last three weeks and we did blood tests on him.  The tests for CAE, Brucellosis, Johne's and Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL) all came back negative!!!!!!!  Yay!!!!

Here is the interesting thing about the blood tests...... I drew the blood!!!!!!!!!  The only time I've ever stuck a needle into anything was when I gave a dog a rabies vaccine once.  I've never drawn blood although I have seen it done when I worked at the vet and I've obviously had my own blood drawn by nurses.  So I wanted hubby to draw it because I'm squeamish, but I wasn't strong enough to hold Crockett still, so I had to do it.... I watched several videos on YouTube, then went outside to try it.  Hubby held him still, with his head tilted back.  I started feeling his neck with my fingers and was appalled to feel how thick his fur was and how many neck wrinkles he has... it was going to be a lot more difficult that all those short haired, young goats I saw in the videos.  I almost chickened out.

I was so scared I was nauseous.  I didn't have any clippers to shave him so I found the groove in his neck and pressed my fingers against it.  Then I started tapping with my other fingers above that until I felt the vein bounce.  Then I stuck the needle in at an angle and he actually cried!!!!  I almost let go of the syringe.  I was freaking out!  I sucked it up and pulled back on the plunger.... lo and behold I hit the vein on my very first try!!!!!!!!!  I filled the syringe, pulled it out and held pressure on his neck to stop the bleeding.  Then I cleaned it with alcohol and put the blood in a red top tube in the fridge so we could mail it off.  I can't believe I actually did it and I did it on my first try!  Now I feel like maybe I should have pursued the whole vet career thing lol.  I'm still too squeamish for it though I think. I'm proud of myself for doing it though.  :D

So now that he has been quarantined and tested, he gets to make babies!  Yay!  I've so missed having goats and especially baby goats.  I can't wait!  Isn't he gorgeous??  He has marbled eyes.  They are half brown and half blue.  He's going to have such cute babies.  I'm not going to want to sell any of them hehe.

 

 Doing the flehmen just like the horses do.

 So cute!

 Here you can see how his eyes are marbled.

I have been DYING to share this news, but I wanted to wait until his test results came back in case we had to return him.  I have been sooooo excited all day that he came back negative on everything.  I'm so happy.  I'll share more about him, more pictures and more about the breed soon.