Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Vomit Burps

This has not been the best year for our farm.  First with the chicken mites. That meant no chickens...no eggs to sell. That's a large chunk of our farm income.  




Then in early summer IT hit.  


We were noticing that Stocking's milk was starting to taste...well...odd. It wasn't bad at first.  
When we first started drinking her milk it was great.

But like I said by the beginning of July it tasted strange.  At first we thought it was because it was so hot out.  So we figured when the temps cooled off it would be ok.

By mid July the milk was so disgusting that I couldn't even make cheese with it!
It didn't smell bad. But the taste.....

So we enlisted the help of our trusty vet, Dave MacHattie.
When he asked how it tasted the only way I could describe it was,
"You know when you burp and it tastes like vomit, or as I like to call them, a vomit burp. And it burns the back of your nose...well that's what it tastes like!"


"Oh. That's bad."

"Yup, it's bad."

We got her checked and nothing. Healthy goat. 
So the only logical thing to do was get the milk tested at the lab.

50$+ later the milk results came back perfect. Absolutely nothing wrong with the milk, zip..nada..nothing.
No bacteria, no virus, no weird creepy things crawling inside the milk ( like people that oppose raw milk would have us believe). The milk was in perfect condition.

So now what??!!!

Our goat god MacHattie was at the end of his rope. So were we. We had a useless goat. For a month or so we didn't bother milking her. We just let the kid nurse.


So we backtracked and made sure everything we did was perfect, sterile. 
Whatever we did we'd only change one thing, one week at a time.
First we changed to hand milking. Nothing.
Then the feed. Nothing.
Then the supplements. Nothing.
Then the hay...the flavour changed a little for a few days, but then went back to full vomit burp flavour.
Finally we decided that we'd give her one more week or then sell her as a pet.

So I talked to Alex C.  the guy that sold us Pisnak. He's got a gazzillion goats, he might have an idea.

He did some research.

Finally he told us to give her injections of Newcells. Once a day for 5 days.
After the second injection the flavour was 75% better, by day 4 it was back to normal!!!!

Hallelujah!!!!

It's been several weeks now and it's still good. She's also putting on some weight.  She's also eating more. I'm thinking something was missing in her diet.  What? I don't know.
But things are back to normal...whatever that is.
Hopefully that's the last of the excitement for a while.

Have a Blessed Evening
Lisa

3 comments:

  1. Interesting! The only info I could find on Newcells is that it is for iron deficiency but I would have thought that would show up in her blood tests. Let us know if you find out anything more and keep us updated on how she is doing! :)

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  2. Sorry about your chickens. How strange about the goat milk, but I am glad you were able to get it figured out!

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  3. Vomit burps?!?!?! I can just imagine the flavor of that milk perfectly lol

    Glad she is back to normal.

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