Our does had their first kids this spring and we kept one doeling and her brother. We neutered the buckling at 8 weeks with the "ritchey nipper" (recommended on the Fiasco Farm site). His left testicle shrank as expected and the right kept growing. We heard this can happen and 3 weeks later did the right side again. Through frequent checking in the following weeks we determined that the right side was shrinking as well. Recently, at almost 5 months i noticed that his testicles seemed bigger and that he was starting to grow a buck mane - and then he started trying to mate with in his aunt who had just came into her first estrous after her nursing kids left. We again checked his testicles and realized that his LEFT testicle had REGROWN (our best guess is that the cords were comprised enough so that it shrank for a while but then somehow recovered).
We separated him from our does right away (hopefully his aunt isn't pregnant) and brought him to our local goat vet to be surgically neutered. He rested a lot for a couple of days and then happily rejoined the herd in a normal way.
On the 4th day post-surgery he start resting and hiding again (standing or laying in corners away from the other goats), his temperature was 105.5 and the vet prescribed Nuflor shots (antibiotic) every other day for 3 doses. After the 2nd dose his temp was still up so they had us bring him in to see if the wound needed to be reopened. They decided that it did not and prescribed Polyflex shots twice a day for 3 days and then once a day for a couple more days. After about 3 days of Polyflex he starting acting more normal/social again but his temperature has stay up (it's been between 104 and 106 and once went down to 103 but then back up again). We called the vet and with their recommendation are now on the 6th day of giving him Polflex twice a day.
This afternoon we let them all out from their small yard into our pasture area - we noticed that he was breathing heavy so we brought them back in and took his temperature which was 106.8 - the highest it's been!
He is a very sweet guy and we are so sad to have put him through all of this. Any thoughts or advice on this whole sequence of events would be appreciated. Especially what you would do from here (but also curious if other people have had this kind of trouble with the ritchey nipper or burdizo on ND).
Thank you,
Lysa
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I had my boys surgically castrated and asked the vet why he wasn't suturing. He said exactly what Deborah has stated - the site won't heal well because it can't drain if it's closed. All of ours healed with no problems.
We use a Burdizzo because I had read that the Ritchie Nipper has a gap between the tooth on the end and the crushing thing, which leaves an opportunity for the cord to be incompletely crushed. We have never had a problem with the Burdizzo working on goats. Assuming no one has failed to tell me that it didn't work, we've had no complete failures in about five years of using it, which would be about 100 bucks done.
We did have one buck that had a testicle that did not completely shrink up. It was golf-ball sized at a year of age, which is not the size of a buck's testicle, but it was larger than the other one, which had completely shrunk up. He acted bucky but did not stink. He also was able to breed does, but none of them ever got pregnant, so our assumption was that he just had enough testosterone from the small testicle that he could do the deed, but if there was any semen being produced it wasn't going anywhere.
You mentioned "reopening" the castration site, which makes me think they sewed it up. If so, that is the problem. I have never heard of a vet sewing up a surgical castration in goats. In fact, they all say that you do NOT sew it up because it will get infected. It needs to drain.
At U of I, they use Excede antibiotic for anything surgical with goats. It is very long-acting.
No problems - we use the burdizo and have never had a problem. Scary temperatures you are having, sorry.