Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We had a bit of a shock at feeding time today: Onion did not come over for food (unheard of usually) and then when we looked at her, we saw she had ballooned right up as though she was heavily pregnant. Whilst never having had the problem before, we instantly knew Onion was suffering from a severe case of bloat. Bloat is caused by the animal eating something that 'disagrees' with them which then stops the normal workings of the stomach meaning gases build-up and cannot be released. Goats (in common with sheep and cattle) have four stomachs, one of which is called the rumen. The rumen is the 'first' stomach and it is in here that the food the animal eats gets broken down and softened before being regurgitated to be chewed some more (see 7th December for further detail). Anything that stops the rumen working normally is bad news for the animal. Onions' skin around her tummy area was as tight as a drum because of this build-up of gases and in turn that would have been putting pressure on her heart and lungs!
Having never had to deal with such a problem before, we called the vet. We were told to give Onion some liquid paraffin straight away as this would help her to both burp and pass wind and so start to get rid of some of those gases. We had to get 250ml inside her which was a lot but the effect was almost immediate: Onion's tummy began to get smaller and smaller and we could see she was starting to feel more comfortable.
The big question was why this had happened and the vet's theory was she may have gorged herself on the goat mix this morning - whilst Onion can be a little greedy at times, we felt we would have noticed had she had that much extra... so we are not sure!!
Her kids (Chestnut and Silver Birch) were very pleased to have their mum back to normal because she had NOT been letting them feed and so they were getting hungry!!
Not quite a happy ending though because in examining her before the vet arrived, we found a large lump in her neck. The vet took a sample from it and is going to have a look at it under the microscope tomorrow: none of us really have any idea what it is!!