Hail the Queen

[Nanno]

We said goodbye to our Pretty Pet this afternoon and the place seems lonely without her despite all the other goats running around. We found nothing of note in the necropsy except that her spleen was pale with unusual speckles. However, the vet said this is usually nothing more than an indication that the goat is sick. Her rumen had no food in it but contained several gallons of brown liquid. She was dehydrated, so the liquid was clearly not moving from the rumen. One of her other stomachs (can't remember what it was called) had a lot of impacted food in it that also clearly wasn't shifting. It had been at least three days since she last ate, and longer than that since she ate more than a few bites so that mass had to have been in there for a good week or more. Unfortunately, we didn't discover the reason why her digestive system stopped working--there was nothing clogging it--but clearly things had ground to a halt for quite some time. The vet took samples from various internal organs to send to the lab for testing, but at this point I doubt they're going to find anything. We're going to make sure and rule out Johnnes, but I don't think that's what it was and neither does the vet since the symptoms don't add up and her small intestine appeared normal. Poor baby. She was much too young for this to happen. I was hoping we'd find a tumor or something to explain it, but at this point it feels like we put down a perfectly healthy, normal goat. But obviously something was far wrong and since she had given up fighting for herself it didn't seem fair for me to try to force her to hold out any longer. I spent all day sitting with her and she knew she was loved. She's buried on the hillside near Jet and we will not forget her.