Come on, Carlos

A sweet, albeit timid, young Boer goat, his immature body had taken a savage beating due to the insidious Barber’s pole worm. With its single-hooked tooth, this sinister parasite latches onto the wall of the hapless animal’s stomach. Slicing into the delicate mucosal lining, it feeds on the blood that flows. Being prolific breeders, anaemia of the host animal quickly follows.

With the signature ‘bottle jaw’ look, and his eyelid membranes a terrifying white, it was clear little Carlos was in a bad way when surrendered into our care. However, the most urgent of his woes, which far surpassed this, was a crunchy lump on his right thigh that told a crushed tibia bone lay painfully shattered underneath.

At such a late hour of the day, our only course of action was to stabilise the young lad through intravenous fluids, ever-so-careful splinting of his leg, band-aiding his anaemia and addressing his pain as best we could.

And then the dilemma: would he be strong enough for surgical repair? And what surgical repair would that be?

With x-rays the next day revealing a jigsaw puzzle of bones, the question became, could the leg even be saved? And whilst we know that tripod goats and sheep can do very well, our first option is to always try and save the leg. And that is exactly what we scheduled for later that week.

We have discovered, or rather he has advised us of, the grasses and plants he prefers, which we are picking in abundance. His body is growing stronger and more robust, as his parasitic burden has been
addressed. And he is coming to understand that we are here to help him and not hurt him.

Come on, little Carlos, you got this!