Valentino the goat is once again getting his kicks at Clanton farm
Dr. Dee Jones set Valentino's severely broken leg in a cast at first. It didn't heal, so the next step was amputation and prosthesis. (Serenity Animal Farm)
Whenever a new animal arrives at Serenity Animal Farm in Clanton, Mark Bagley waits until he gets to know the animal’s personality before naming it. So you can imagine why a 2½-year-old Oberhasli goat with a racing stripe down his back and an ever-present smile on his face is called Valentino, after the famous “Latin lover.”
“He thinks he’s a ladies’ man,” Bagley said.
Even Dr. Dee Jones, the large-animal vet who takes care of the animals at Bagley’s farm, raves about Valentino – and he’s seen a lot of goats in his time. “He’s such a neat goat,” Jones said. “So handsome. He’s kind of like the Fabio of goats.”
The exceptionally good-looking Valentino is one of 25 goats living at the animal sanctuary Bagley runs on 100 acres. He started the farm in 2008 by taking in some homeless goats that needed medical care. Today, he takes care of about 180 animals that range from farm animals to the more exotic. Serenity Animal Farm’s website lists everything from alpacas to zebus.
Dr. Dee Jones’s son, Mays, was the first to sign Valentino’s cast after he broke his leg in late March. (Serenity Animal Farm)
Most of the animals on the farm have been abused, neglected or surrendered by owners, Bagley said, so he spoils them with loving care. “When they come to us, they’re here for life.”
In March, Valentino was standing on his back legs, happily eating leaves from a tree, when his front left foot got stuck in the fork of the tree. “He spun around and broke it,” Bagley said.
The leg was severely broken, said Jones, who put a cast on it. He’s put casts on goats’ legs before, and they’ve healed perfectly. But in Valentino’s case, “the leg just didn’t heal,” he said, and the bone became infected.
At this point, many goat owners might have opted to euthanize. Bagley just couldn’t do it. He considers Valentino to be part of his family.
“I spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about it,” he said. “But he’s too young, too happy, too vibrant.”
Jones knew he wasn’t going to be able to save the leg, but he and Bagley had an idea the goat would be a good candidate for a prosthesis. With that in mind, as Bagley held Valentino during surgery, Jones left the healthy top portion of the leg in place instead of amputating at the shoulder as he normally would.
Bagley posted on Facebook in search of someone to make a prosthetic leg for Valentino. Before he knew it, as he was driving home from his full-time job in industrial construction and general contracting, Bagley received a call from Dr. Adam Williams of Next Step Prosthetics and Orthotics in Alabaster. Williams was confident he could replace Valentino’s missing leg.
“It was a very emotional moment,” Bagley said. “I had to pull off the side of the road.”
‘A commitment’
Bagley jokingly describes himself as a “farmacologist,” which he defines as “someone who has more passion and compassion for animals than people.” He grew up on his family’s farm in Clanton and, from an early age, remembers rescuing animals – raccoons, possums, skunks, owls – and raising them until they could return to the wild.
His favorite quote is from Mark Twain: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Bagley believes he was “born to care for animals that cannot take care of themselves.”
Like most farmers, he is up early every morning, sometimes getting out of bed at 4:30 a.m. if he has baby animals to bottle-feed. He spends about three hours a day feeding, watering and checking on all the animals at the farm – and that’s in his “spare time,” when he’s not at his regular job.
Valentino is getting acclimated to his new prosthetic leg. (Serenity Animal Farm)
“It’s a commitment,” he said. “As long as I’m alive, we can do something.”
This year has been tough for everyone on Earth, but Bagley’s farm has been particularly hard-hit by drought, flooding and high winds; the rising price of hay; and a drop-off in volunteers because of the coronavirus pandemic.
When it comes to personality, Valentino has competition among his fellow goats. There’s Onyx the “goat-dog” who, when he’s not lying on the porch with the dog friends, follows Bagley around the farm. Visitors get a kick out of seeing the solid black Lamancha goat, with its elf-like ears, sticking close to Bagley.
The farm is a sanctuary/animal preserve that doesn’t offer adoptions. But on Sundays, Bagley gives educational tours, asking only that visitors bring a bag of food for their favorite animal.
The farm “survives on food banks,” he said, taking in what’s no longer fit for human consumption. He receives some donations, and he makes some money selling alpaca, llama and sheep fleece, as well as manure. Bagley also buys and sells farm equipment.
“Some of the species will outlive me,” he said, such as Cedric, the five-year-old dromedary camel who should live to be 40. “It’s something you really have to plan for, their lifelong care.”
He’s thankful for the medical care his animals receive from Jones, who has “spent many a night in a rainstorm putting IVs in animals.” Once, Jones came from Prattville to help save a pot-bellied pig that had been dumped in Chilton County and attacked by dogs. “He sacrificed Mother’s Day to help keep the pig alive,” Bagley said.
Today, that pig is alive and well, living out her days on the farm. Her name is Miracle.
A good deed
If Mark Bagley was born to care for animals, Adam Williams was born to his profession, too. At 38, he’s already been making prosthetic limbs for 20 years. Born and raised in Birmingham, he was home-schooled by his mother who was “interested in pushing me forward in life,” he said. When he was a boy, she called him in to watch an episode of “Oprah” because the show featured a Paralympian who had no legs. The athlete was showing Oprah how she put on her running prostheses.
“You could do that,” Williams’ mom told her mechanically inclined son.
After getting his first job in the prosthetics field as a teen, Williams went to medical school in Los Angeles and returned to Alabama, opening his own practice in Alabaster at age 27.
Even with all his experience, Williams had never made a prosthetic leg for a goat. Less than an hour after Bagley posted on Facebook that he was looking for a leg for Valentino, several people forwarded it to Williams. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a good deed.
Valentino’s temporary prosthetic fell off a few times, but Adam Williams resolved the issue and his permanent leg stays on. (Serenity Animal Farm)
Williams approached Valentino’s case as he would that of a pediatric patient. “The anatomy is really different, but it still actuates the same,” he said. “It’s like being a truck mechanic and working on a car.”
The main difference is the goat’s inability to communicate and follow directions. With humans, Williams can “sit down with patients and tell them to move their foot this way or that,” he said. “Goats, not so much.”
During one of the trial runs wearing a temporary prosthesis, Williams chased Valentino around a field for 30 minutes to wear him out, which “forced him to let us watch him sit down and get back up.”
Though he hasn’t been around a lot of goats, Williams concurs that Valentino is “super docile, very relaxed, very chill and friendly.” When approached with a piece of bread or apple, Valentino eats out of Williams’ hand.
He feels confident that Valentino will adapt well to the permanent prosthesis. It will require “minimal management,” Williams said. Every three days or so, Bagley removes the leg to clean it and then put it back on.
Jones said the prosthetic limb isn’t just for looks, or to make it easier for the goat to walk, because he’d already learned to hop around on three legs. The new leg serves a practical purpose by helping Valentino live a longer life.
“I think it will help the joints in his other leg last longer,” especially since goats bear 60% of their weight on their front legs, Jones said.
Hopefully, with his new permanent limb, Valentino can escape the “sick bay” at the farm – a 20-by-20-foot pen where he’s been confined since April – and return to greener pastures to live out life in peace among the other goats.
After Valentino broke his leg, Bagley agonized over the goat’s condition. “It’s just a goat,” people told him – but not Jones or Williams, who willingly gave their time to help Valentino.
To them, he might just be the GOAT, an acronym for “the greatest of all time.”
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This story was first published by AL.com.
