FIRST AID FIRST!

Stock your goat's medicine cabinet with these remedies to use in an emergency

- LISA SEGAR

As a rule, given plenty of fresh air, clean water and appropriate food and shelter, goats are easy keepers. They really are quite hardy. But sometimes accidents and illness happen, and when they do it's good to be prepared. In addition to basic first-aid supplies, here is a list of things I like to keep in my goat medicine chest at all times.

All of the following items can be bought either at a feed-supply store or drugstore and do not require a prescription.

FORTIFIED VITAMIN B COMPLEX: One of the more common and most easily remedied goat illnesses is goat polio, which is a deficiency of thiamine (Vitamin B1). In a true polio case, you’ll want to have straight thiamine, which is available only by prescription, but if your goat is in an early stage, you can often turn it around with the more readily available Fortified B Complex. When we have goats off feed for more than one meal, we generally boost them with a big shot of this.