Traffic Accident Leaves 243 Goats Dead

Our hearts and prayers go out to the Goats R Us family in Orinda after a horrific accident in San Rafael left hundreds of their working herd dead.

Goats R Us provides low-impact brush control and vegetation management to public and private landholders throughout CA and was instrumental in the safe relocation of feral goats from Santa Catalina Island in 1999 through a cooperative effort with In Defense of Animals.

Goats R Us does not sell or dispose of their retiring herd members for profit or loss; they remain at the Orinda ranch for light-duty, local assignments and community outreach, doing what goats do best: browsing, walking, browsing some more with a bit of grazing, taking a sip of cool water, resting and ruminating, and starting all over again.

It’s still unclear if the actions of San Rafael PD officers at the crash site resulted in more deaths from suffocation than would have occurred if they had allowed those who could escape the overturned trailer to do so, then be contained by their on-scene herders and guardian dogs away from the wreckage. We believe a further and comprehensive investigation is in order very soon.

Papa Billy

Papa can’t pose for you at the Pierce College Farm Walk. He won’t nibble your fingers or polish his horns on the trees. The secrets of why his dark, chocolatey color faded, his muscles weakened, and his legs failed were trucked away with him to his death. And if he can’t make more of him again, he’s of no use or value to them.

Lucy

Thible

Thible’s mother and sisters

Peanut Jr. and Dallas

Amelia

Charlie

They’re waiting for you. Not here, but where all perfect souls go.

No one can hear you scream

Well, that’s not exactly true. PFW can hear your screams, little one, from several hundred yards away and even if you’re quite small. Chilling enough to make us literally come running to find you trapped in the broken fencing of your pen, battered and bleeding.

Do you recognize this little pygmy goat? Was s/he once yours, or your child’s pet? If you “donated” your little goat to the Los Angeles Pierce College farm in the hope that your pet would live out a quiet and peaceful life, or you were contacted by someone soliciting an animal for “educational donation,” please email us at any of the Pierce Farm Watch contact addresses.

We’ll do everything in our power to remove the one you once cared for from this situation and secure its safety in a loving home or sanctuary, for surely this is not what you intended or expected. Your little one is now confined in an area on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm that is soil and surface-contaminated with disease-causing bacteria that can be slowly and silently debilitating, even deadly. To then be left unobserved for all but a few minutes a day, trapped and injured, couldn’t possibly be what you envisioned.

Please contact us if you know the identity or origin of this little goat. There’s still time today, but tomorrow may be too late.

9-1-1

I'm sure they can all reach this in case of an emergency, or just choose the tallest to give it a go.

I'm guessing it's a direct line for help?

As the temperature drops and wind sweeps the rain in, we ask you once again to remember the animals on the Pierce College farm, especially the tiny ones, bracing for another storm.

A dry bed in a warm corner, is it really so much of a luxury?

If you care for my hooves now,

I might not be lame before I'm three.

Phone Home

Dear Charles (or friend of Charles who’s been calling),
PFW found your LG camera phone. We dropped it off at the Cingular shelter on Topanga. They’ll take good care of it until you come to take it home.

These two can’t ever phone home. They’ve disappeared from the property. Calls to 16 farm animal shelters from Maine to south of the O.C. turned up nothing promising, as did the two veterinary hospitals within a 40 mi. radius that are ready, willing and able to provide care and comfort to not-horses.

Rather than dwell on the sadly deteriorated state they were in when we last caught up with them, we’d prefer you remember them as they once were.

Back when somebody temporarily gave a damn about them.

This frightened girl (above on the left) has taken their place.

And nothing ever really changes.

A come-from-behind winner

Those of you who bought a square for the Pierce College farm CL abscess rupture game, sorry to report there’s no big payoff. We have a clear winner and she’s blown past the favored contender to victory.

That squishy stuff seeping from the lump on her jaw is Corynebacterium, now on its way to snuggle in the dark, damp ground for a long time to come. She’s pregnant; her babies will be born carriers.

Just like her pen mate was and the babies she’s carrying, too.

Isolating them from the rest of their herd so the contagious exudate contaminates only the soil, surfaces it contacts, and each other is one step in herd health management, with a few more still to go. It’s also a good idea to group together all animals with obviously visible abscesses. Then treat them.

But this one’s likely to blow the next time she scratches her head on the “fence.”

How much of a problem is it? They’re only sold for food. You decide.

Inflation

It’s inevitable, there’s no other direction possible. Stand back. Way back.

Beauty treatments that really work

Please trim my hooves so I don’t walk on the sides.

I’ve been waiting here at the nail shop for a while.

Not pointy, or really square (too 90’s!), and thinner than you did them last time. Are you new? Can I get a soy chai?

Bubblehead

No, we can’t get you a 3/2 fixer in a half-decent part of the SFV for <$450K and we’re not counting the months until we can. We’re counting the days until the eruption of this poor goat’s jaw. Which might look a bit like this after it’s over:

Those three spots on her neck, just to the left of her ear, are the result of previously ruptured CL abscesses.

Ruptured (top) and ready to blow (bottom), right over her babies. And yours. Quiz yourself on your CL knowledge and post your scores. Hint: the answer to number 10 isn’t “c.”

Home Sweet Home

This was ours.

We were born on this compost heap, year after year, lived and died on it. Remember me, Thible from the petting zoo, the one who played with your children all day? That’s me on the left with the white spot on my nose.

I just wanted to say that I won’t be able to come back and play with you this year.

That’s me again, with my mom and my sister on the right, the afternoon before we left in a big trailer. They sold me, Lucy, my mom, my sister and lots more of us at a livestock auction where people buy us to eat or breed. My friend couldn’t walk very well so she went in the trailer, too.

Her mom needed some pills before she was born and she needed some when we were growing up. Her brothers and sisters died when they were little. I guess they needed some, too.

• http://www.saanendoah.com/copper1.html
• http://www.addl.purdue.edu/newsletters/1994/copper.shtml
• http://www.jackmauldin.com/management/minerals.htm