One of our young bucks broke his hip this week. After a visit to the vet today, they said the break was very high on the leg and the only option they provided was for amputation.

Part of raising livestock is that you have to have in your mind a balance, knowing that you have to care for these animals but also knowing that they are not pets. There are sometimes difficult decisions that have to be made. Today we were faced with one of those decisions.

Option A: Amputate the leg.

We had already decided that we weren’t going to keep him - this goat was intended to be sold. With a missing leg his value is now a fraction of what it was previously. Already spent $50 for the x-ray, and the vet amputation fee would add to that amount.

Option B: Slaughter for meat.

Fortunately we know someone who has experience with this, and they were already going to be slaughtering another goat this evening.

I wish I wasn’t sick so I could go observe and learn how to properly slaughter a goat. Painful coughing is no fun; and not something that should be spread to others.

Part of our getting in to raising livestock was so that we could get closer to the production of our food. Animal husbandry offers so many lessons. Real lessons, about life, about death. Our abstracted western existence puts us so far from reality that it allows us to imagine that we are at some higher level than past man; from the barbarians. The truth is that the categories in which we exist are barely real.