Tragedy Strikes Whispering Acres

It is with a heavy heart that I report the death of one of our young angora goats whom we adopted from the Animal Rescue League. It has been a difficult week. I came down with a nasty bug that induced severe vertigo and dizziness, not to mention congestion and ear problems. I stayed home on Wednesday as a result. I sat out in the sunshine on the back porch for a while, because it was a warm day, and ventured over to visit the little goats. All 4 angoras were lively and happy to see me when I visited them. I played with them, petting each in turn and letting them sniff my fingers. They were all perfectly fine.

Thursday morning, Kelly did all the animal feedings so that I could stay in bed longer, feeling crummy and miserable. He checked on everyone, including the angoras, and they were fine. I hauled myself to school for my 10 am class, and then worked the rest of the day. Upon arriving home, around 5:15 pm, I went out to the barn. We had experienced a significant hailstorm in the afternoon.
I went to check on all the goats, and there was a still, white bundle at the side of the pen. I immediately called for Kelly and we discovered the awful truth. One of our dear angoras had died.

We have no idea what the cause of death was. We have two theories. First, the hailstorm must have been incredibly loud on our metal Wick building. The small goats pasture is next to that building. She probably never experienced a hailstorm before. Possibly the noise of the hail on the building simply terrified her, and she died of a heart attack. Secondly, there was a lot of lightning with the storm that passed through. She was laying next to a fencing T-post. It is possible that lightning struck the T-post and she was too close, and being wet, she succumbed to a massive electrical shock.

The Rescue League is doing a necropsy on her, but I have no news at this point. I shall update when we know anything. In the meantime, all the other goats appear to be perfectly well. We have no sign of illness or slowness or any sort of malady in any of them. That said, she herself showed no sign of illness either, the day before she died, nor even the morning of the day she died.

It is especially tragic when you rescue an animal and try to do your best to give it a loving, safe home, then something goes wrong and that animal dies. We are simply at a loss to know what we could or should have done differently. This sad cactus surrounded by hailstones kind of expresses how I am feeling right now.

Today, perhaps in an effort to make me smile, our hens outdid their previous maximum total of a 12-egg-day, and made it a 14-egg-day. Bless their feathery hearts. We got our first olive green egg today.