Not too long after Rheema went, Dawn started scouring (diarrhea). I may have mentioned that Johnes disease was what forced me finally to quit farming goats, after nearly going broke trying to fight it.
Dawn had always been a skinny goat and was never a satisfactory breeder – both clear danger signs. Her mother also died under suspicious circumstances. So I wasn’t happy when drenching with a few altenatives failed to control Dawn’s scouring problem.
It was looking all too familiar, and I didn’t hold out much hope for her – or her kid Eve. I had seen it all so many times. I was debating whether once more to ask my neighbour to put down yet another goat, as he had done so often for me before, when the idea came to me that I should just let her out into the bush.
I’ve never, ever deliberately let my stock out there, and I was never happy when they went, but she looked to me as if she hadn’t long to live. I did not want her dropping diarrhea around the paddocks and the shed where the others were, because the Johnes bacterium is in the dung. I didn’t want to ask my neighbour for yet another favor. So I took her down the drive and led her up into the bush beyond my double steel gates.
It was a sad parting. She had been a good friend. But I knew there were places under rocks close to where I left her where a goat could keep warm and dry in bad weather, and of course there was food aplenty – if she lasted long enough to eat any, which I really doubted. And naughty Rheema was up there somewhere, too. Heavy-hearted, I retraced my steps, reflecting grimly that this cursed, incurable disease was still with me, over 10 years after getting rid of nearly all my stock.
No doubt I should have got rid of every last one of them, but that’s easily said. When you’ve assisted at the putting-down of over 60 of your friends, and watched another 40 or so die, you’re shell-shocked, believe me.
It’s about a year since I let Dawn go, and after a month or two my neighbour, whose back door looks up to some nice sunny rocks on the northern face of our hill, reported that he’d seen two goats at a distance up there, taking the sun. He has continued to see them and I actually saw them myself a few days ago.
So she recovered. Well, she had her pick of a huge variety of vegetation, and I’m convinced that given the chance animals instinctively know what to eat if they are sick. Up there, there are no feed stresses, they don’t eat off the ground as we force them to do, and there are no breeding stresses – and it’s stress that brings Johnes disease to the surface. So she must be “in remission”. But one thing I know for sure – if she had stayed here, she would have died. I’m glad I let her go : it taught me something, and it’s restored her life.
Dawn’s daughter Eve sickened and died not very long after her mom left. She, too, had always been skinny. She got thinner despite drenching, and finally began to scour too. Her playmate Sunshine and the other youngsters were just fine. I’d seen kids of Johnes does die at about 18 months like this in the past and I was thinking I’d have to put her down. But I went up to the shed one morning after they had all gone out to graze and found her dead in the pen where they had spent the night. Fortunately, she wasn’t ill for long.
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