This week our videos shared our daily journey dealing with Burke the bucks eye problem.
What started as a cloudy weepy eye, thought to be Pinkeye, turned into an entropion eyelid problem and shots being given to the eyelid.
The dust has settled, a few weeks have passed since the video was recorded, what has happened?
In today’s episode of #askhomesteady, Fiona C on youtube asked us what caused the entropion. We go on to answer 3 questions…
- What do we believe caused Burke’s eye problem? After doing much research into entropion eyes, we found 2 causes of this problem. In the book Diseases of The Goat, it talks about Congenital and Acquired entropion. Because we observed no problem until after the goats disbudding, we believe that Burke did not have this problem until after the trauma associated with disbudding, and so he had not congenital entropion but acquired entropion.
- Did we fix the the problem or did Burke need surgery? 3 Weeks have passed since we began treatment. Both of Burkes eyelids are fixed. The initial shot to his eyelid fixed one eye, the other needed additional help. We used Michel Clips to staple the eyelid open and correct the problem. In the weeks that have passed this problem has not resurfaced. We feel it is fixed for good.
- Will we breed Burke or should he be culled? We have not decided 100% on whether he will be bred again or be culled, but currently our feeling is that the entropion seems to not be a congenital problem. All kids in this years herd have the same sire (believed to pass the trait on in congenital cases) and only 1, the one with the most severe swelling after the disbudding, had the issue. We did not notice the issue at birth, only weeks later after the trauma of the disbudding. As this was an easily corrected problem that seems to not be something that will be passed on to others, we have not decided to cull him yet. If in the future we bred him and found the problem resurfacing in kids from birth then we could change our minds going forward.
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