Sassy, now a week old, is an adorable little goat. She’s happy and fun and cute. But when she drinks her milk, she gets very congested.
Today, Suellen had the vet check her out. We learned that Sassy has a severe cleft palate, too bad for reconstructive surgery to be an option.
Cleft palate in goats can be congenital, or it can be caused if the mother eats certain poisonous plants during the first moth of pregnancy. These plants, all found in Utah, are lupine, wild tobacco, and hemlock. And they remain toxic even if dried, so hay containing them would also be toxic. Research suggests that the alkaloids contained in these plants may paralyze the fetus, and if the tongue doesn’t move, the bones of the palate can’t knit together as they are supposed to.
We contacted the farm where we bought Sassy’s mom, and they have never had a case of cleft palate. But they said they changed hay suppliers this year, so we suspect that Clover got some bad hay when she was first pregnant.
Common wisdom is that goats with cleft palate don’t live long. They get pneumonia, or they die from lack of nutrition once they get on solid food.
But there’s been a lot of research about cleft palate in goats. A USDA lab can now repair it with prenatal surgery if it’s diagnosed before birth. For goats born with cleft palate, they have apparently developed an appliance. We don’t yet know if Sassy would be a candidate for that, but we’re hopeful.
[...] at length with Dr. Kim Panter of the USDA Poisonous Plant Research Facility in Logan, Utah, about Sassy’s cleft palate, shown [...]
[...] our little girl with the cleft palate (left), is now over four months old. She is learning to cope with her disability, which prevents [...]
[...] short for Sassafras, was born March 16 with a severe cleft palate. She was challenged from the beginning, being unable to nurse. We knew that her odds [...]