Disbudding and Hoof Trimming

You can see Ginseng's horn bud burn above his eye.

We took the whole family out to the field for the first time since the bucklings were born. Ginger was nervous the whole time, and Ginseng and Sycamore had a great time.

On Friday evening, both bucklings were disbudded by my animal sitter, Andrea Meyers, of Suzie-Qs pet sitting service. She takes care of all of the animals when we go out of town. In addition to disbudding the little guys, she trimmed Ginger's hooves for me. Gingers hooves have gotten seriously overgrown, and after freshening, she began to walk with a limp.

She's always be very difficult to trim and I've never been able to do a thorough job on her hooves. Well, while she was pregnant, it seemed that her hooves grew at lightening speed, and by the end of her gestation, looked like ones out of a book that demonstrates really, really badly overgrown hooves. I couldn't wait for her to freshen so that I could finally trim them - not supposed to do it during pregnancy for fear of stressing out the doe to the point of aborting. But right after she gave birth, she had a very hard time even standing on the front legs and would sometimes kneel on her front legs and be standing on her hind legs. That's when I knew that she was really in trouble.

Thank goodness for Andrea who came in and took one look at Ginger's feet and insisted on trimming them immediately! Her husband, who helps with disbudding, straddled Ginger in the front, and Andrea straddled Ginger in the rear, and Ginger fought! John came in to help both of them, and Andrea started clipping away! Luckily no hoof rot. It took three adults to trim her dang feet, so I don't feel so awful for not being able to do it by myself all this time. Next time, John and I will know how to hold her to get the job done. I won't let them get that bad ever again!

Today, I can really see improvement in Ginger's walk, she's moving around much better. She even trotted! One leg is still standing badly, but I'm hoping that now that she's no longer carrying all that extra baby weight, and her hooves are trimmed, that she can recover.

Andrea is really great - she will be caring for our goats and cats when we go out of town, including milking Ginger! I love that I have someone that is able to help out like this! Not many folks, especially ones with goats, have someone to look after their farm animals when they want to get away from the farm.