Thursday, August 25, 2016

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.

9 comments:

  1. He is gorgeous! Yes, you will have adorable babies, and I don't know how you will be able to sell them. I can't believe you took the blood! I don't know if I could have done that.

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    1. Thank you! We will be able to keep all the doelings this first year but we will have to sell all the bucklings. It will be hard but I remind myself how smelly the males get and it's easier hehe.

      I surprised myself with the blood drawing. I didn't think I could do it either, but now that I have I think I could do it again no problem. The only thing that would bother me at this point would be if I missed the vein and had to dig around for it... Shudder!

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  2. Cute guy! Are you just going to sell all of the babies or are they being bred for meat goats? Your comment to Judi about the smell made me laugh, we had 2 intact male pygmy goats for a very short time when I was a teenager. They STUNK so badly! We ended up selling them shortly after because of their smell, they peed all over themselves all the time.

    Drawing blood isn't actually that bad, I can stick App on the first try now as well thanks to his joint supplement. Lots of video watching was required for sure.

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    1. We will sell them. I won't take the babies to an auction because that's where they sell for meat just like horses. Goats in 4H are really big around here so I'm not worried about not having a non meat market. Eating brush is still going to be their main purpose and being cute of course.

      They do stink horribly!! After drawing his blood I thought I would never get the stink off my hands!!

      I don't know if I could draw blood on a horse... I didn't think I could on a goat though either, so who knows?

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  3. He is lovely! The coloring on him is gorgeous! I'm really impressed you were able to draw blood after watching YouTube videos on the first try. Congrats! You really can learn anything on YouTube. I can't wait to read more. We have been thinking about adding some goats to our farm both for meat and to help clear some of the plants out.

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    1. YouTube is awesome lol! I use it for everything.

      Goat are the best. They aren't for everyone. You have to have good fences and lots of patience, but they are so much fun. I wish I'd taken before and after pictures of their pen. It's crazy how much brush they've eaten. It was so dense you couldn't see the back fence and now you can. Everything is neatly eaten up to the same level as high as they can reach. :)

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  4. What a handsome buck - and with a show history too, wow you got a good buy. I for one canNOT WAIT for goatling photos!!!!! Wheee!

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    1. We got lucky. We had to spend a whole day driving to go get him in another state, but it was totally worth it. I am so excited and can't wait for his first babies!!! :D We have to wait until November to breed the doelings and they have a five month gestation, so it will be a long wait unfortunately. That gives us plenty of time to work on taming them down though.

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