He didn't seem to have any issues for a long time, and was getting around just fine on 3 legs.  However, after about 6 months his GOOD, weight-bearing left leg started to deform under the stress of carrying the extra load.  It recently got to the point where he could no longer hobble around very well because his leg had become unstable and started to buckle with every step.  He often would be painfully hobbling along (because he was still determined to try and enjoy life and hang out with his buddy Chai, the sheep), and then fall flat on his face when his left leg collapsed. 
We feared we would have to put him down because nothing we could do seemed to help him.  Then a friend mentioned the idea of getting him fit for a prosthetic leg (and possibly a brace for his good leg), and we wanted to give it a shot because Puck is such a special little goat and still has lots of life left to live!
So, after consults at CSU and with the Denver-based pet prosthetics company, Orthopets (www.orthopets.com), Puck just got outfitted with a prosthetic leg on Tuesday, March 29th. 
 
He is still learning how to use it, but hopefully he will be more mobile on it very soon.
In the meantime, we are working on setting up a little fundraising campaign to help raise money to pay off Puck's prosthetic (which cost just under $900), and put towards the leg brace that he still might possibly need for his left leg in the future.  He is such a sweet, dog-like goat, and we really hope that all this work and effort on his behalf will pay off and get him back to a happy, mobile life!

Backing up a bit now... February started off with our truck breaking down BADLY (the engine threw a rod), requiring that a new engine be installed to get it up and running again.  After holding off on that and doing research to try and find the most affordable option (meaning that we were without our farm truck for almost 6 weeks!  Eeek!), we finally had to bite the bullet and get a new engine.  And let's just say that a 'new' (aka factory rebuilt) engine for our truck was not cheap!  That was a painful blow to our finances that we really did not need!

Next up, some of the draft horses decided it would be fun to mess with one of the water hydrants in the turn-out area about 2 weeks ago.  It has a protective fence around it, but that still did not keep these particular draft horses from figuring out how to get at it, resulting in a broken water line underground that compromised the water supply to all of the other hydrants AND the automatic waterers to all the pens.  That required a tense day of calling around to find someone with the tools and availabilty to come out, dig down to the water line with a backhoe, and fix it.  A huge sigh of relief was let out when that leak was finally fixed... only to have it break again about 1 week later.  We have that fixed again now, but it leaked water everwhere and created a big sinkhole around the hydrant.  We are still working on getting everthing buried back in!

On a happier note, the weather is finally warming up and we are very much looking forward to Spring and Summer, and all the projects we want to accomplish.

Horses have been getting adopted at a slow but steady rate, and hopefully even more will get adopted soon as several are in training right now and others will be involved in a training clinic that we are hosting at the end of April with Anna Twinney of Reach Out To Horses...

We also will be joining Denkai Animal Santuary for an adoptable animal showcase in June.  More information on that, and the April clinic, to be posted soon!