Em Nau Farm BLOG

Welcome to 2015 

The New Year has brought both heartbreak and joy to Em Nau farm. 

On New Years Day we feed the animals in the afternoon as normal and there seemed nothing untoward.  About an hour and a half later, when we went to put the animals away for the night, we found one of the recently born kids lying stiff as a board beside the goat shed.  The kid, a wether, was born with its twin about 3 weeks ago to Numbawan so we gave them the temporary names of 1.1 and 1.2 so we could refer to them (we don’t normally name those animals that will go in the freezer).

We rushed him down to the house and, whilst Heather prepared the Vitamin C shot (we thought he may have been bitten by something), I placed little “1.2” on a towel as his legs were sticking straight out and he had a locked jaw.

As I placed him down he bent his legs and started to walk around the lounge room much to our surprise.  Although he was walking strangely we thought whatever had bitten him may not have given him a big does of toxin and he would make a recovery.  He walked around for a few minutes then had a little seizure and went all stiff again and toppled over.  All night and most of the next day he just lay there, having spasms, and letting out little bleats. 

A little bit of research lead us to believe he may have had tetanus – the symptoms being stiff limbs and tail, locked jaw, pricked ears, dramatic response to touch and loud noise by stiffening (more than he was) and seizures.  The research lead us to believe he would die within in 48 hours as treatment is seldom successful. 

The research also told us he probably caught the bacterium Clostridium tetani  through either his disbudding or when we put his castration ring on and he would have picked it up through the soil, faeces or muck in the goat pen after the recent couple of days rain. 

Our other thought was it may have been a paralysis tick as I found a small tick on his tail, but this wasn’t engorged and they normally hit the back legs first with the paralysis. 

Long story short over the next 48 hours he had bouts of “floppiness” where he seemed to be getting better but would ultimately have another seizure, go stiff and revert to just lying there.  About 7AM on the second day (the 3^rd of Jan) he went all floppy, and stopped breathing.  We tried a little CPR but couldn’t get a response. 

The joy part of the early part of 2015 (so far) was one of our cows, Beth, finally gave birth to a huge heifer on the 4^th of January.  We have been expecting Beth to drop the calf for the past couple of weeks (probably a month) as each time she eats she would leak/squirt milk from her back teats onto her legs.  Each night we would go  out numerous times to check on her only to find her either sitting chewing her cud or standing having a feed of grass.  Each morning we would go out expecting to see a calf or after we came home from work or being out we would expect a new arrival but Beth was holding off.  Finally on the 4^th she wandered down to a flat spot in the paddock and started the process of giving birth. 

About two hours later she had produced a boof headed, big bodied heifer calf which we have named Mac (as in Mac-Beth). 

Finally the farm has had a couple of foxes move in.  A mother and her cub have been terrorizing our chickens, killing two and just missing taking a third.  This has forced us to ensure the geese, ducks and chickens we allowed to free range over night  are secured away so it makes it harder for the fox family to take one of them.  We have been pretty lucky over the past 3 years we have been at Em Nau that this is only the second case of us losing chickens to dingoes/wild dogs or foxes. 

That’s about it for now so as I always say Live your Dash.  Talk again soon.