Medical Supplies on the Trail

[Taffy]

What medical supplies do you feel should be included in your goat "medicine chest" when on the trail?

[Mike]

I am no vet, but I have seen alot of really nasty wounds between Iraq, Afghanistan, and being a Firefighter.  All I carry is two large roles of kerlex, a large Ace, the purple disifecting spray stuff (wound coat) and my pistol. I think the list in order of priority of injuries a pack goat would recieve would be this-
Mechanical Injury- Twists, falls, breaks and dislocation.  Not much you can do.  Splint if possible.  I would do everything possible for this goat.  Totally survivable.

Animal Attack-  Domestic/ wild- Stop bleeding, clean, spray, dress.

Ballistic Injury- Red Necks during hunting season.  Dress the wound if possible.  Put your goat out if its missery if it is a abviously fatal injury.

Poisening- Depending on area you live in read a book know what to look for.  From what I have read a goatvwould have to eat quite a bit of wild poisinous plants vs. decorative plants around a house.  You can make a charcoal slery and try to get it into your goat which would cause vomiting.

People may really disagree with me but ....  this is just me.

[Nanno]

Like Mike, I bring bandages and some wound spray too, along with Carolyn Eddy's book on goat first aid. We always bring a people first aid kit, and a lot of it would be useful for goat care in an emergency. I believe I have a snakebite kit as well that is probably more likely to be needed for a goat than a person. I keep activated charcoal at home, but since poisonous plants aren't much of an issue on the trail in my area, I don't bring it hiking.

(Charcoal doesn't induce vomiting--it absorbs toxins so they can pass through the gut instead of being absorbed.)

[Mike]

Nanno, 
You are correct about the charcoal absorbing the poison, but I have given it to people on scene for poison ingestion and they have all thrown up.  There may be a additive in ours that causes the vomiting that may not be present in pure charcoal.

I to carry a fairly extensive human first aid kit that has some item that could cross over into goat use.  I am going to pick up that book on Goat First Aid.   I bet it is a intresting read.

[Nanno]

Hmm... I would think you'd want to induce vomiting before giving charcoal so that the charcoal could pick up whatever wasn't heaved up. You don't want them to barf up the charcoal! We've had to give horses charcoal after breaking into the grain bin, and of course they can't throw up. I've given charcoal to several of my goats that I found barfing already, but only one of them barfed again after I gave the charcoal. We do have some poisonous plant that grows on my property but I don't know what it is. For the last several years on almost exactly April 20th, one goat starts barfing green slime. It's never the same goat twice, so apparently they learn their lesson. I've given charcoal to all of them and all have recovered just fine. I'm not sure if they needed the charcoal, but I'm sure it helped. Whatever the poisonous plant is, I think it has a very small window of toxicity because we've never had a goat get sick outside of a single day around April 20th.

[Mike]

Thats really weird.  The more I learn about goats the more I realize I dont know anything about goats!!

[Kat]

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.)

[Mike]

Great first hand accounts.  Good use of equipment that you had on hand!!!  Coband/ vet wrap and even ace bandages can be tricky to apply with out getting them to tight.  It really takes consentration to purposfully make each wrap what feels like a little loose.  Practice makes perfect.

[IdahoNancy]

Vet wrap can be very restrictive. Use padding under it like gauze when protecting a wound or like Mike said wrap it a little loose. This will allow needed blood circulation.

[Mike]

I am up for a hoof trim this week.  I am going to see if goats have a visual cabilary refill in there hoof pad.  Thats what we check on pt's before and after we put on a splint/ bandage/ terniquet on them. I know I can see refill after I trim, never paid attention before.  That would be good to know.  Cap refil is a great way to check circulation.