We serve an amazing, holy, powerful God!

I am floored. In awe. Amazed. I stand in wonder, and all I can do is praise His name.

Since Saturday morning, after Killdeer’s traumatic kidding event, she had not been acting right.

First, she wouldn’t leave the barn. No matter what I did, I could not convince her or bribe her to leave the place where she birthed her triplets. Now, I was able a couple times to forcibly get her to the milk stand and milk her, but one time I even had to milk her where she stood in the barn. She would not be moved of her own volition, which was so incredibly odd behavior.

Last year after she threw triplets, she immediately left the barn, ate hay and grain, drank water, and went about her business. She acted as though nothing had happened. It was all easy breezy. So for her to not want to leave the barn had me concerned.

Second, she wasn’t producing much milk. Not like she did last year. I thought perhaps it was because her full milk just hadn’t come in yet because she was still producing colostrum.

Third, she would eat if I brought her food, but she just didn’t have much desire to get up and move around much. The only movements she was willing to do were standing up, circling, and then laying down again. She would squat as though she needed to urinate, but only sometimes would she be able to.

Fourth, she was grinding her teeth. This is a sign of pain in goats. I assumed it was the swelling from a traumatic birth, but I couldn’t be sure. It could also be infection. But infection usually means the goat will go off feed. The first signs of a sick goat are a goat off its feed and a temperature. She was still eating, so I didn’t think it was a temp or an infection, so the grinding had to mean something else.

Yesterday, I took my barn cat to the vet to get a rabies vaccine, so while I was there, I mentioned all of this to the vet. He said she could be acting that way because she’d had a rough labor and delivery the day before and that she may just need time to rest and recover: He gave me some Banamine to help with pain and inflammation, and then a fellow goat owner friend came over to assess the situation and help me with the shot. She and I discussed the situation, behaviors, and decided together that we agreed with the vet and that she just needed time to rest. Heath was at drill yesterday, so he wasn’t home during any of this, and this seemed the best answer to my goat friend and me.

So Killdeer got the Banamine shot, and she seemed to perk up a little. She walked around some, ate a little hay, drank some water, and then she went back to the barn. I hoped that by the next day, she’d be back to her normal self.

That was today.

And she wasn’t.

Killdeer was still laying in the barn, then standing up, pawing at the ground, circling, laying down again, squatting, etc… I realized that she was still exhibiting signs of labor, even though she had begun to expel the placenta and it seemed that at least most of it had already come out.

Retained placenta is something that can happen after a long, difficult, traumatic birth, especially if there is a stillborn birth along with that. I began researching and asking for advice on goat owner forums. I was told to take her temp, call the vet, give antibiotics, give molasses and Tums and magnesium and oxytocin to stimulate uterine contractions to help her expel the rest of the placenta. I was told to administer selenium, calcium, and vitamin B because deficiencies in those vitamins can cause retained placenta. All great ideas. All valid ideas. All things I was working on doing.

The vet office is closed on Sundays, so the call to the vet would have to wait until tomorrow, but I planned to take her in first thing. Hubby actually came down with some sort of sinus infection/cold over the weekend and stayed home from drill today, so he was home with me all day as I was researching, consulting, and otherwise fretting over this situation.
I’d even read an article on retained placentas in cows, written by a vet, that said that most of the time even when a cow has a retained placenta, no intervention is often best so that the uterus isn’t damaged in the process of trying to help things along. The article said that sometimes it takes up to ten days for a cow’s placenta to detach. But matter what I told myself or what anyone else said, I knew my goat wasn’t acting right and that something was wrong.

Around 3:00 this afternoon, I began collecting my syringes of vitamins, minerals, and medicines for Killdeer to help her expel the rest of her placenta. I had to try something because I couldn’t get her to the vet until the next day, and I felt like I needed to check on her. Whatever I could do to help her, I was determined to do it.

While I was heating some water to mix with the magnesium, I was overcome with the need to pray. Silently, I cried out to God: “God, I know You can hear me. Please, once more, bend Your ear to earth and hear my plea. Help me. Help my goat. Whatever is going on, she needs it to be expelled from her body. Please help me. Amen.”

Then Hubby and I went outside to the barn.

Killdeer was laying down in the barn, the way she had been off and on all day. I was able to coax her to her feet, and she took the vitamin B paste for me (it tastes good). Hubby and I stood there, discussing our options, and I decided to look at her backend to see if there was any change.

I noticed something brown that wasn’t there before. I had a thought that it looked like something, but I couldn’t be sure.

I took a step back, and I said to Hubby, “There’s some more placenta coming out, it looks like, I think?… so that’s good.” And for some reason, I decided to have another look, because I didn’t trust myself with that assessment, I guess. And again, for some reason, I reached out to touch it, because I had a thought. A thought I wished I wasn’t having.

But I was right.

It was an ear.

Killdeer didn’t have a retained placenta.

She had a retained kid.

I immediately called for Jack to come out and help his daddy get Killdeer onto the milk stand. She did not want to leave the barn, and she was fighting tooth and nail to stand her ground. But I had to get that kid out of her.

The kids came out faster than I’ve ever seen them respond to farm chores, and I told Hubby I needed latex gloves.

I ran to wash my hands while Hubby looked for gloves. He found a single pair in our first aid kit, and then Hubby and Jack got Killdeer on the milk stand. Killdeer is a strong, willful goat. She outmuscled any one of us on her best day, and today, with Heath being sick, he was on his worst day, so it took all of their strength, and prayers to God for more, to get her on that stand and locked in place.

By the time we got Killdeer to the stand and I was standing behind her, the ear was no longer to be seen. It had gone back inside. But I had seen it, and now I had to get that kid out of Killdeer.

I reached my hand in, not knowing exactly what I would feel, but I was hoping the kid would be easily reached. Thankfully, it was. But I couldn’t get a hold of anything that would give me a firm grip. I couldn’t find a hoof, a leg, anything.

What I felt was a neck.

I realized that the kid’s nose was bent back toward its tail, and there was no way it was going to come out that way. It felt impossible. Everything was slippery. I was scared. I was crying. I could not do this.

No matter what, the only thing I could feel was a neck. I pulled my hand out and looked at my husband and said, “I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Hubby told me to breathe. Get oxygen into my brain. Calm down.

I prayed. Have you ever prayed a guttural, visceral prayer? A prayer that consumes your whole body? One borne out of desperation because you know you absolutely cannot do what you’re being called to do? A prayer of surrender to His almighty power- who is the only One who can supernaturally enable you to do the impossible?

It wasn’t even a prayer, really; it was just His name.

With groanings to deep for words… that’s how He intercedes, and I called upon His name – the Name that is above every other name – to help me.

This time I reached in with my left hand, hoping to get a better angle.

I found the kid’s ear.

From there, I found its nose and was able to get my hand grasped around its head. I had to push its head back to create enough space to bend it forward, and from there I was able to birth the head.

At this point, I was screaming, “Jesus!” and “God!” over and over.

I still had to pull the rest of this kid from Killdeer. This was a big baby, and it was stuck. I would need to get a shoulder out before I could pull it all the way out.

With one more rallying, desperate plea to God, I reached my hand underneath the kid, and I was able to reach just far enough to grab its shoulder and work it out. And then I pulled on that kid with everything I had.

The kid splashed onto the milk stand.

It was a boy. Fully formed. Black body with brown legs. Brown and white ears. A beautiful buckling.

And then a visceral, guttural wail emerged from my lips like none I’d ever heard before. Bent over in half, I screamed out all the emotions within me that were just too much.

When there are no words, sometimes that’s all there is to do.

Killdeer immediately licked my hands when I went up to her head to check on her. She ate grain and alfalfa pellets. She took more vitamin B paste and an iron supplement. Magnesium. Her pupils went back to their regular rectangular shape.

She got off the milk stand and walked out into the pasture. She went potty. She ate hay. She ate more alfalfa pellets and grain. She walked around. She expelled some things.

She went into the barn after about an hour of watching her to make sure she didn’t go into shock, and when I checked on her about an hour ago, she was standing up and came to the door to greet me.

All-in-all, she seems back to her normal self for the first time in three days.

Killdeer shouldn’t be alive. She had a dead kid inside of her somewhere between two and three full days. From Friday night to Sunday night, she labored. At this point she has no sign of infection, but I’m taking her to the vet tomorrow, just the same.

An amazing thing to me is that that kid didn’t look decomposed in any way. He looked as though he could have been born on Friday night. There was no atrophy, smell, wrinkling, discoloration. He looked completely normal.

Killdeer never showed any signs of infection. No smells that would indicate she were ill or in trouble. She just wasn’t acting right. Without intervention, she would eventually have succumbed.

And Hubby brought this up to me tonight, as we were sitting in the living room, resting; he said: “You asked God to hear you… and He showed you an ear.”

What are the chances that a soft, floppy goat ear presented first for me to see, at just the time I was out in the barn? How does a soft part of the body, with no bones, on a dead goat kid, make its way out of its mother? I’ve never heard of such a thing. And I doubt very much that I ever will again.

All I can say is it’s a miracle.

God heard me, and He sent me an unlikely ear to let me know.

We serve a mighty, powerful, personal, loving God.

Hallelujah!

In the same way the Spirit [comes to us and] helps us in our weakness. We do not know what prayer to offer or how to offer it as we should, but the Spirit Himself [knows our need and at the right time] intercedes on our behalf with sighs and groanings too deep for words.

Romans 8:26