Early September Herd Update

Pictured is Maple just a few minutes ago, clear eyed and able to see again, playing with her herdmates with a downed adolescent tree.

Ive been so busy lately that I havent updated at all on Maple and Bruma! Or what the pinkeye status of the herd is.

The short answer is that we are all clear! Maple & Bruma have fully recovered and have rejoined the does (with their stitches out), and the very last case of pinkeye was resolved fully over a week ago. Yay!

For context (and the long answer), I had a sudden case of pinkeye spread through my herd. I still have no idea where it originated from, as my herd is closed and I take biosecurity VERY seriously, but all the same, it spread like wildfire through the doe pen. I managed to tighten up biosecurity between pens and it never jumped from the doe pen to anywhere else, like into the babies or buck pen, thankfully! However, it was a hellish few weeks. Everyday I had more new affected goats. I lack the infrastructure to quarantine what is essentially an entire herd of goats (i own over 60 😅), so I just reluctantly let it run rampant through the does and diligently treated everyone from the moment their eyes began streaking until cloudiness went away. It was basically viral. Every new case started the same: a new goat would have "tear-like" streaking down from their eyes, I would start them on topical penicillin and pink eye spray 2x a day immediately along with a onetime shot of draxxin, their eyes would become cloudy, I would stop treatment as soon as eyes were clear again. Some became severe enough that they suffered temporary total blindness, while others were affected so mildly that they never even got cloudy eyes. On top of that, I vaccinated the entire herd with Vision 7 w/ Spur, to hopefully prevent a round two of this, which has anecdotically seemed successful.

Every goat had their own timeframe for recovery, however every goat did show daily improvement after day 3 regardless of how severe their case was. That is, with the exception of Maple and Bruma. Those two are particularly weak in the autoimmune department for different reasons: Bruma is 14 years old, and Maple is young yet a polio survivor with permanent nerve damage who came to me as a practically-dead rescue 5 years ago. To say I was struggling with the feeling of being a failure was an understatement. Bruma had never been sick a single day in her entire long life prior to this, and when Maple was a weak little baby in ICU being held down during her polio seizures, completely blind and paralyzed, I used to tell her: "one day you'll be able to see, and never be wrapped in darkness again". When now-Maple started running into fences, standing in the rain in confusion, and being unable to find where the hay was, I brought her inside to the spare room for more intensive care. It broke my heart. Then Bruma started struggling a few days later. I contemplated bringing her inside with Maple - the two had never particularly interacted much before, and Bruma is as independent as they come so I was a bit reluctant to pull her away from her daughters in the field as I knew it would affect her heavily in the mental department. After watching Bruma walk face first into a tree trunk, I pulled the trigger and brought her in. The two continued to decline. I read them Mary Oliver essays, treated them to the best of my ability, but after many days of this I knew they needed more. We went to our lovely trusted vet, who performed a procedure on their eyes that is very similar to an entropian procedure, and stitched their eyes shut. For two weeks these stitches remained, and I moved the girls into the garage pen. Despite their ailments, they were as active and chipper as could be, which made me wonder if they would thrive a bit better outside. I lacked shelter for them in a separate pen, but I could walk them on halters out to a special pen I built with lots of untouched forage in between rainstorms and nighttime lockups. This makeshift outside pen shared a fenceline with the does (which didnt particularly bother me, as I was still treating pinkeye in that pen, so there wasnt exactly a huge biosecurity risk there). The moment Bruma and Maple entered that outdoor pen, Bruma's youngest daughter Marble and her oldest daughter Opal both came sprinting full force towards the shared fenceline. They touched noses. It was lovely. YanYan, Maple's best friend, would linger at that fenceline for hours watching Maple forage around.

Bruma had somehow managed to rip her stitches out prematurely, but luckily not in a way that damaged her eye. She still sustained some significant ulceration to her right eye. Her left eye at this point was completely clear and had vision, which gave me substantial hope for them. My ultimate fear was that this sickness would be too much for the two, or even one of them, and it would travel to their brain to kill them. This did not happen. On Saturday, we took out Maple's stitches, and lo and behold, she had complete vision with two clear eyes. By this point, Bruma's ulceration was gone and replaced only with a dull cloudiness you could only see in certain lighting. On Monday, I put the pair back in the doe pen. Oh how I wish I had taken a video of the reunion. Every single doe, not just the daughters or the bonded besties, came up to Maple and Bruma and seemed to celebrate the return of their herdmates. I sighed as I watched them directly rub their eyes against each other. At this point, the doe pen was now totally clear, and luckily it has remained that way. I have very little concerns about another spread, especially with the vaccine having had the time to work its magic amongst everyone.

Now, I do still have one active pinkeye case. It is Mara, my elderly retired girl. However, she had already been separated about a week prior to coming down with it, due to concerns about her health in a different way. I posted about Mara a while ago, and the consensus right now is still iffy. Its likely cancer, or a brain tumor, and quite frankly I just havent had the time or the means to be able to dig deeper into it. What I can say is that we have confirmed that it is not anything we can treat or fix. Mara is in a pen all of her own, where she seems content, chewing cud and walking around. Her pinkeye is rather severe as well, but with how well everyone else (including Maple & Bruma) did through the treatment and with their recovery, I'm not necessarily worried for Mara in that regard. Her separation happening a fairly significant amount of time before her coming down with it is also a relief to me. Mara is getting the treatment she needs, and has a very happy, content quality of life, so she shall stay in her isolated outdoor pen with a calf hutch and continue being monitored.

Sorry for the long post, especially since almost everything here was a bit redundant, having been covered in a plethora of previous posts. Still, we have reached a resolution, and I am able to invite my goat-owning friends over to the house again without a mental breakdown about if they bring it back to their goats or not. Yes, there is still Mara. No, she is not easily accessible at all. Yes, she is improving and doing better, albeit slower than I'd like, but still doing better. Maybe she will rejoin the does in a few weeks, or maybe she will remain in her "private quarters". That will ultimately depend on Mara herself and the likely cancer.