As you may already know, we have two male Pygmy Goats here at Seaview Wildlife, Basil and Ollie. Basil is the oldest and has lived at the Park for a number of years. Ollie is about two years old; he came to live at Seaview Wildlife when he was a youngster – to be a friend and companion for Basil. He’s probably the bossiest companion Basil could ever have imagined! Even though he’s younger and smaller, Ollie has established himself as the ‘alpha goat’ and he bosses and head-butts everyone around him! This includes all the species of livestock he comes into contact with including the Alpacas, Wallabies, Chickens, Geese and Guinea Fowl. However, it seems Ollie may have met his match …. one of the animals has finally taken a stand against our bossy Ollie!
Goats are renowned as being escape artists, but did you know that they also break into as well as out of enclosures?!! Our 'Miniature Pigs’ are neighbours to the Goats. It seems that Ollie was determined to make his way into the Piggy Paddock – perhaps he thought the grass was greener on their side? There were no Keepers to witness the occurrence but we can only imagine what happened next … Ollie, after pushing his way in, would no doubt have tried to butt the Pigs around – in his normal assertive manner. However, these two Pigs weren’t having any of it! It seems most likely that one of the Porkers bit back – resulting in a nasty injury to one of Ollie’s ears. We had to call our vet out to deal with the problem yesterday. Dr Ian Green, over the years, has dealt with a myriad of challenges here at the Park – so this didn’t cause any unnecessary angst and was dealt with as calmly as always! The ear was too far torn to stitch back together; so, after sedating Ollie and administering a local anaesthetic, Dr Ian removed the torn half of the ear and stitched the remaining edge.
The images below show a few snap shots of the procedure. Starting with Ollie looking sorry for himself, sporting a torn ear, and looking quite dozy after being injected with a sedative. The rest of the process is quite self explanatory – with the ear being anaesthetised, trimmed and stitched; then the patient asleep, covered in a blanket, recovering from his operation.
We’ve since had the Pig Paddock fence reinforced to keep Ollie from attempting a repeated break-in. Mind you, after this experience, one would hope even Ollie might be put off even thinking about a repeat performance …. Pig power reigns!!
The two images immediately above show Basil (left) looking quizzically on – and showing off his one-horned wonder look! Top right shows Ollie, wrapped in a blanket , head propped gently on a log, sleeping off the sedative – and showing off his new look half-an-ear-look! What a mottley pair they are!
