Emily is our guest photographer today for an exciting round of de-worming and hoof trimming!

Okay, maybe not so much.

The only excitement is the hilarity Emily finds in the difficulty I have wrestling the goats onto their backs.  They. Don’t. Like. It.  They fight it very, very hard.  At one point I was fully sitting on Finn’s butt, trying to get him onto the ground, but he wouldn’t give in.  Thank goodness he’s relatively light, because I finally had to pick him up and set him down.

Anyhow, de-worming and hoof trimming are things that get done fairly regularly with livestock like these.  Goats naturally carry a parasite – load in their guts that does them no harm.  Only when it builds up to an overload does it become a problem.  For this reason, goat – keepers worm fairly often.

I tend to not de-worm on a rigid schedule; I don’t have a huge number of animals and I’d rather the parasites not build up a resistance to the meds.  Since I have so few and I am around them so often I can keep a good eye on them and judge their “load” size by the colors of their gums or the insides of their eyelids.  If these are a nice, dark pink I don’t worm them.  If they get to be a pale pink, or worse, greyish color, this could mean they are becoming anemic from an overload of parasite.

Today I gave them meds for two reasons. One, it’s been a couple of months and I figure with the warm weather returning it was a good time; and two – I am going to move them into a new pasture soon.  (More news on that to come).

Once meds were given we got to work on hooves.

Hooves get trimmed whenever they start looking too long, or when you worm if you’re doing that on a regular schedule.  If you let them grow they’ll cause foot problems for your animals, so they’re super important to maintain.

Fortunately goat hooves are very easy to trim.  They do tend to get full of dirt and poo and nastiness.

Frodo decided to chew on my boot while I was working on his brother.

Jerry was humming and concerned for his boys.

Milkshakes only let me do her front hooves today.  I didn’t feel like wrestling her back down, so I’ll get the back ones later.

Otherwise, we’re all spiffied up and good to go!