I had the duty of drawing blood on all of our dairy goats this evening. Normally Jim is the “vet” around here, but for some reason, I’m good at finding the vein, and well, Jim isn’t. I must point out that there are very few things that Jim isn’t good at, but finding a goat vein is just not one of his gifts. So Jim holds the goat, and I pull the blood. Here is a video of how we do it:

The first time Jim “made me” pull blood, I admit to being a bit squeamish. But it really was very simple and not a big deal. Plus the goats are really good – they don’t cry or carry on, or anything like that.  I did have to stick Victoria about 6 times before I figured it out, but I gave her a few extra oats and some extra loving, and I think she’s forgiven me. 

I’ll send the blood to a laboratory to have it tested for CAE, which is a goat disease. Our herd is currently CAE negative, but we still test annually to make sure it stays that way.

Colter and Emery got to put the blood in the red top tube. They think it is so cool because when you put the needle in, it sucks the blood into the tube all by itself. Last year Jim had a nice little science discussion with them on why that worked. When I asked them if they remembered what caused it, they both responded, “Air pressure.”

See – they do learn!