THIS IS THE WAY WE WASH OUR GOATS

papa-pepper (80)in #homesteading • 6 years ago

Yes, really. We had our reasons.

There are certain kinds of "goat lice" that can show up on goats, especially in the colder months. Usually once the temperature starts heating up they disappear on their own, but we didn't want to wait. We figured that the sooner we could rid our goats of their uninvited "friends" the better. Interestingly enough, goats can be sort of like cats when it comes to getting wet.

WORKING ON THE GOAT WASH - YEAH!

Since we do not have water on the whole property yet, to get some to the goats we needed to fill some buckets and bring them over to that area on the trailer. While we do look forward to the future where such tasks will be easier, for now we've just got to do what we've got to do.

@Mama-pepper had picked up some shampoo for animals with lice, and we also got a few brushed to help us wash them and make sure that the shampoo would make it to the skin level beneath the hair. Since we have zero experience washing goats we wanted to be prepared.

The first step was to get some of the goats. We started small with "Of" and "The." Here you can see that I had a lot of helpers, which can come in handy for tasks like this.

We got "King" too, since both he and his mom, Daisy, had some goat lice as well.

These little ones didn't seem to mind the water too much. To start with we tried to just make that all of their hair was wet. Once they were soaked to a satisfactory level, it was time for the next step in the process.

With the help of some @little-peppers we began to lather the kids and work the shampoo into the skin. Thankfully, these little ones didn't care too much about this step either.

To be safe and make sure that Daisy would stay still, we used her goat milking stand. This stand sure is coming in handy.

Since we didn't have enough water to really rinse them like we should, we decided to move the wet and lathered goats up to a hose. Thankfully, we already had the trailer hooked up and ready to go. If you saw my post yesterday about walking Daisy on a leash, this is the reason that we wound up taking her for a walk. We walked her to the trailer and then took her for a ride.

The pressure of the hose and the amount of water available worked way better than trying to rinse them with water from the buckets.

Daisy was less comfortable getting hosed than the kids, but they all did a good job and we tried to make it thorough but quick. Soon they were shampoo free and ready to dry.

After a ride back to the land, we placed them back in their pens. Later the @little-peppers combed them out. Hopefully the anti-lice shampoo was effective. Like I mentioned earlier, these lice should leave when the weather warms up anyway, we just didn't want to wait. Also, in case you are wondering, these lice are "species specific" and only like goats, so we should be safe.