West Milton farmer Dennis Albaugh found a new born goat nearly frozen to death in the early morning of Feb. 26th.
Desperate to save the kid’s life, he took some unconventional advice from other goat farmers: warm it up in the oven. So, he placed the goat in the oven with the temperature on a low 170 degrees.
“I was hopeful, but I wasn’t really optimistic it would work,” Albaugh explained. “I looked and started to see him breathing better. I could see his heartbeat was getting stronger. He still wasn’t moving though. You could see he was fighting for his life now.”
Albaugh spent the next couple of hours tending to the goat, trying to raise its body temperature, keeping him in and out of the oven. Eventually, the goat was able to stand and sit on its own and feed from a bottle. Albaugh’s wife’s dog even took a liking to it.
Despite Albaugh’s best efforts and the supposed recovery, the goat’s condition worsened as the afternoon rolled in. The goat, which they’ve named Goliath, passed away around 9:45 that night.
“We’re heartbroken, he solemnly said. “We had hoped for the best. He was doing so great this afternoon. He was getting so strong. But he just took a turn for the worse, and his condition deteriorated rapidly. The coldness and exposure time was just too much.”
It may not be the happy ending we were all hoping for, but there’s the circle of life in a nutshell.
