It was an emotional Spring for us at Timeless Acres. Honestly, it was the toughest 2 months we have faced here thus far.
With the joy and excitement of healthy births and baby goats, also came the shock and sadness in the sudden deaths of our littlest doeling and a 3 year old doe.
Seren’s littlest doeling, Sonnet, died just a few hours after disbudding which was also 5 days after her birth. For the past 2 years, we have chosen to have a vet disbud our kids because of the pain management and sedation that they can provide. And while all disbuddings on that day initially appeared to have gone smoothly, it was sadly not the case when we went back into barn 3 hours later to discover Sonnet was unable to stand and was clearly uncomfortable. In the 30 minutes we waited for the after-hours vet to call us back, Sonnet had died. It was acknowledged that her death was due to the heat from the disbudding iron that caused swelling of the brain. We had heard that this can happen when disbudding, we just never imagined it would. Ever.
And all the while we were busy with the activities of pre and post kidding, one of our does, Khloe, had been intermittently displaying signs of being unwell, but nothing unwell enough for us or our vet to know for certain just what it might be and how to treat. After several weeks of her displaying unwell symptoms and then improving, she declined again and this time she was not improving. An ultrasound and x-ray revealed some clues, but only clues. Pneumonia, maybe. Fluids around her heart, maybe. Ingested a foreign object, maybe. Neurological, maybe. Nothing was conclusive except for the fact that she was not getting better and everything that we were doing was not helping.
Our vet was wonderful throughout this and he came by to check up on her as needed and was actively thinking outside of the box looking for a possible diagnosis and solution.
Despite all of our efforts, she continued to decline to the day she could no longer stand and the decision was made to euthanize her. Our vet came back out one more time to help us give Khloe a humane death. It was heartbreaking. It was also peaceful. And both losses in such a short timeframe were overwhelming.
Khloe Girl was one of our first goats and she was also the most mischievous, sometimes pushy and ever playful and we adored her all the more because of those qualities. And we miss her.
The events this Spring felt like a reality test from the Universe, asking us, ‘are you really ready for this lifestyle?’ And we paused ya’ all and asked ourselves, “are we?” And then we answered, “oh, hell yah, Universe.” And with more awareness, because ‘when you know better, you do better’ (this wisdom borrowed from the late and ever great, Maya Angelou).
While the overarching message of the past 2 months was of loss, it was also about lessons, about love and about resilience.
A younger Khloe, always in our hearts.
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