Chat
01-31-2019, 06:05 AM
I had to deal with a couple of injuries on the trail last summer.
1. Chest - this happened at home. somehow my goat scraped off a fairly large area of skin on his chest, right where the chest strap for the saddle goes. Had a 4 day trip planned so the challenge was getting something to stick over his chest to protect it while going uphill. Ended up using human XL bandaids that I carry anyway for this, went without chest strap on flat and downhill. Later back at home I tried various other tapes but couldn't find anything good that sticks to goat hair, I'm all ears if anyone has suggestions.
2. Leg Injury-happened on another trip, same goat had somehow gashed his leg inbetween hoof and dewclaw, bleeding. We restrained him (not well enough initially) and I used filtered water to clean with wet paper towel, applied a gel bloodstop I carry which worked great, then antibiotic and vet wrap. Somewhere in this process I got kicked in face pretty good, despite wearing safety glasses I actually have some permanent vision damage now from this. Anyway the next morning he was limping horribly and we were unsure how the heck we were getting out with him. The vet wrap was the stretchy crinkly type and it looked too tight, it had shrunk overnight. I removed it and after about an hour, and some meloxicam slipped into his breakfast he was able to walk out. Lessons learned: 1) restrain very well before treating bad wound and 2) vet said don't use that type of wrap (we had him out after we got home, luckily no tendons were affected.)
1. Chest - this happened at home. somehow my goat scraped off a fairly large area of skin on his chest, right where the chest strap for the saddle goes. Had a 4 day trip planned so the challenge was getting something to stick over his chest to protect it while going uphill. Ended up using human XL bandaids that I carry anyway for this, went without chest strap on flat and downhill. Later back at home I tried various other tapes but couldn't find anything good that sticks to goat hair, I'm all ears if anyone has suggestions.
2. Leg Injury-happened on another trip, same goat had somehow gashed his leg inbetween hoof and dewclaw, bleeding. We restrained him (not well enough initially) and I used filtered water to clean with wet paper towel, applied a gel bloodstop I carry which worked great, then antibiotic and vet wrap. Somewhere in this process I got kicked in face pretty good, despite wearing safety glasses I actually have some permanent vision damage now from this. Anyway the next morning he was limping horribly and we were unsure how the heck we were getting out with him. The vet wrap was the stretchy crinkly type and it looked too tight, it had shrunk overnight. I removed it and after about an hour, and some meloxicam slipped into his breakfast he was able to walk out. Lessons learned: 1) restrain very well before treating bad wound and 2) vet said don't use that type of wrap (we had him out after we got home, luckily no tendons were affected.)