You would not BELIEVE the night i had last night 
Quick back-story - me and OH bought this house with my mum and dad a couple of years ago and split it into two semis, so we now live next door to them.
Ok... so... last night mum got home from work at about 7pm so i went next door to say hi, and looked out of their kitchen window onto the paddock. I saw a pigeon flapping around and Mork and Mindy (our goats) were nudging it from behind So we went outside to see if it was injured and it looked like it had broken it's wing
So dad got the air rifle (which we only keep to put rabbits/pigeons/small animals out of their misery if we find any injured) and shot it. Unfortunately he was looking down the lens at the time he fired and it recoiled and has given him a bit of a black eye LOL
Then we decided to put the pony and goats in, so went and got them out of the paddock. But when we went into the paddock dad noticed some plastic near the water trough so i went over to pick it up and it was empty sachets of rat poison
I went over the paddock with a fine-toothed-comb and we found 6 in total! With a few of the blue granules scattered around too!
So we quickly put the animals in the stables and i ran (yes, RAN ) into mum and dad's house and told mum to get off the phone and phone the vets cos the animals might have been poisoned.
When we phoned the vet she took down the name of the poison and then had to drive half an hour away to her other vets practice where she keeps all her reference books with poison info etc. So while we were waiting for her to phone back we went over to see the neighbour to ask if he'd put down any rat poison sachets (at this point we were thinking that some yobbo had chucked them into the paddock over the trees!). He said no so we went to see the farmer over the road.
He said no, but the caravan park at the end of our lane has had a problem with rats and has been putting them down. Apparently when the rats find them they eat them and then carry the empty packets to where there's water and them dump them there. And we found most of the packets near the water trough.
The farmer said that he's been finding loads of packets near his drainage system and sewer outlet too. So at least we know it's not someone trying to kill the animals on purpose
Anyway, when the vet phoned back she said that the type of poison had not killed any goats of ponies as far as her research showed. She said there were 7 goats on record who had eaten it and none died. And 3 ponies. Two of them had had no vitamin-k1 injection (the cure) and they were fine, and the one who HAD had the vitamin-k1 injection had developed mild colic but was fine afterwards.
She said to keep and eye on them all over the next 3 days. The first 24 hours were the most critical, but it could take effect up to 3 days later
She said the first sign is bleeding gums, so as long as they don't develop bleeding gums then they'll be fine.
She doesn't think Tilly (the pony) will have eaten any, as the grass is good and horses generally don't eat anything that tastes 'foreign' to them anyway. The goats will eat anything though so we'll have to keep a really close eye on them.
Me and Alan (OH) went and checked on them every 2hrs last night overnight and hosed down the paddock around the water trough this morning and gave the trough a really good scrub.
But we're going to have to keep a really close eye on the paddock now, because i went out there just now and found ANOTHER empty sachet
Mum and dad are away until tomorrow lunchtime now, but when they get back they're going to go and see the manager of the caravan site and tell him what's happened and see if he'll use bait boxes instead, as this is ridiculous - we can't keep going out to search the paddock every couple of hours indefinitely!
Oh, and on top of that we had a phonecall last night that my uncle's got to go into hospital next tuesday for a couple of days because his breathing's bad so they've got to see what's wrong with him and he's my nan's carer so mum and dad have had to go down and get nan today (200 mile round trip!).
Let's hope that bad things come in threes and nothing else happens!!!
Quick back-story - me and OH bought this house with my mum and dad a couple of years ago and split it into two semis, so we now live next door to them.
Ok... so... last night mum got home from work at about 7pm so i went next door to say hi, and looked out of their kitchen window onto the paddock. I saw a pigeon flapping around and Mork and Mindy (our goats) were nudging it from behind
So we went outside to see if it was injured and it looked like it had broken it's wing So dad got the air rifle (which we only keep to put rabbits/pigeons/small animals out of their misery if we find any injured) and shot it. Unfortunately he was looking down the lens at the time he fired and it recoiled and has given him a bit of a black eye
LOLThen we decided to put the pony and goats in, so went and got them out of the paddock. But when we went into the paddock dad noticed some plastic near the water trough so i went over to pick it up and it was empty sachets of rat poison
I went over the paddock with a fine-toothed-comb and we found 6 in total!
With a few of the blue granules scattered around too!So we quickly put the animals in the stables and i ran (yes, RAN
) into mum and dad's house and told mum to get off the phone and phone the vets cos the animals might have been poisoned.When we phoned the vet she took down the name of the poison and then had to drive half an hour away to her other vets practice where she keeps all her reference books with poison info etc. So while we were waiting for her to phone back we went over to see the neighbour to ask if he'd put down any rat poison sachets (at this point we were thinking that some yobbo had chucked them into the paddock over the trees!). He said no so we went to see the farmer over the road.
He said no, but the caravan park at the end of our lane has had a problem with rats and has been putting them down. Apparently when the rats find them they eat them and then carry the empty packets to where there's water and them dump them there. And we found most of the packets near the water trough.
The farmer said that he's been finding loads of packets near his drainage system and sewer outlet too. So at least we know it's not someone trying to kill the animals on purpose
Anyway, when the vet phoned back she said that the type of poison had not killed any goats of ponies as far as her research showed. She said there were 7 goats on record who had eaten it and none died. And 3 ponies. Two of them had had no vitamin-k1 injection (the cure) and they were fine, and the one who HAD had the vitamin-k1 injection had developed mild colic but was fine afterwards.
She said to keep and eye on them all over the next 3 days. The first 24 hours were the most critical, but it could take effect up to 3 days later
She said the first sign is bleeding gums, so as long as they don't develop bleeding gums then they'll be fine.
She doesn't think Tilly (the pony) will have eaten any, as the grass is good and horses generally don't eat anything that tastes 'foreign' to them anyway. The goats will eat anything though
so we'll have to keep a really close eye on them.Me and Alan (OH) went and checked on them every 2hrs last night overnight and hosed down the paddock around the water trough this morning and gave the trough a really good scrub.
But we're going to have to keep a really close eye on the paddock now, because i went out there just now and found ANOTHER empty sachet
Mum and dad are away until tomorrow lunchtime now, but when they get back they're going to go and see the manager of the caravan site and tell him what's happened and see if he'll use bait boxes instead, as this is ridiculous - we can't keep going out to search the paddock every couple of hours indefinitely!
Oh, and on top of that we had a phonecall last night that my uncle's got to go into hospital next tuesday for a couple of days because his breathing's bad so they've got to see what's wrong with him and he's my nan's carer so mum and dad have had to go down and get nan today (200 mile round trip!).
Let's hope that bad things come in threes and nothing else happens!!!
