Thursday, October 28, 2010

Herd Health

Monday we had the vet in for a number of reasons.  It was the biggest group we had looked at in a long time.  We had health certificates done on a maiden female and a herdsire who have been sold and will be traveling to their new home this weekend.  6 girls had blood draws for pregnancy testing.  Two crias had blood draws for DNA testing.  It all went quite well.
The final exam was for a female who has not held a pregnancy since her last cria was born in 2007.  Serafina would breed, and then reject, only to show up open again in a couple of months.  This year she has been "humping" the other females, and refusing the males.  Very frustrating, and also disruptive.  An ultrasound showed no major problems, but possibly a retained corpus lutium.  We tried the series of hormones on Serafina last year to no avail, so this time we chose to have a blood analysis done to see if she had a hormone imbalance.  Better to know what you are dealing with before spending the money on the hormone injections.  The blood is sent to the lab at Washington State University's Veterinary department, so we may not have answers on any of the tests until next week.