Abigail's skinned knee
So, the reason behind our most recent manger renovation
is that Abby skinned her knee and I freaked out. A skinned knee on a
goat just looks really scary! Our poor doe had torn all of the hair and
hide away from a one-inch-diameter circle on her front leg, and I
thought the world was coming to an end.
I doctored her up with
hydrogen peroxide and homemade comfrey salve, then rushed inside to ask
those near and dear to me for a dose of perspective. "Was there blood?"
Kayla asked over the phone.
"Well, no," I answered.
Gently, Kayla told me how the first time her nephew skinned his knee on her watch, she'd cried real tears of anguish. "Did he cry?" I asked.
"Well, no," Kayla answered.
Now, I'm not going to
tell you that Abigail's woes were as simple as a human skinned knee. But
in the ensuing days she hasn't had trouble doing the important things
in life --- eating, drinking, sleeping, and head butting her herd mate.
And even though there's some swelling, there's no sign of heat when I
cup her leg both above and below the wound. So I think she's going to be
fine.
Still, the manger --- the
source of the skinned knee --- had to go. Luckily, Abigail likes the
replacement apparatus much better. The bigger holes and higher
surface-to-volume ratio makes it easy to pick out her favorite strands
of hay...and drop everything else on the floor. I know this almost certainly gives a blog buddy fits,
but spoiled goats seem to need to spoil hay. Maybe one of these days
we'll grow our own top-notch feed and then our goats won't be so
persnickety.
In the meantime, I'll continue to give Abigail everything she wants for
fear of her skinning another knee. After all, a contented goat stays on
the ground...
...sometimes.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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