Poor Rosie

Rosie was not improving so I called the vet to come out and look at her. After poking around in her belly she looks up at me and says "She has a retained kid." My first thought is "OMG how could I have missed that? I am a terrible goat midwife!" But then she says it's only the size of an apple. And it could have been from this year or last year. Goats can wall them off apparently. She thinks Rosie's difficult kidding irritated the uterus and is causing her illness and the retained kid is part of that. If it's from last year then the rough kidding irritated it and we just need her body to wall it back up again. If it's from this year she needs to wall it up (or expel it). She also feels there is a uterine rupture because she felt fluid in the abdomen. Oh poor Rosie. This doesn't sound good.

Treatment plan - high dose of antibiotics, a steroid and a B vitamin shot. Plus foods high in protein to help her gain some weight because she is soooooo thin now. AND I have to dry her up so that means bottle feeding the kids. She said I should start to see improvement in about 48 hours and that until then it might look like she is worse. And she was right. Rosie didn't want to eat much and she laid around a lot. Wouldn't even eat peanut butter/garlic balls (gross to me but a delicacy to goats). 48 hours later and she gobbled up it up.

I have to make a decision about Rosie. If she pulls through this (and I have my doubts - the vet didn't say it but I could tell she thinks its a death sentence) I will have to retire her. I've had her for 3 years and only the first year did I get milk from her. I got one doeling from her that year who died the following year. So at this point, I wasted my money buying her and feeding her for 2 years.
Life with goats is sometimes hard.