Back in early May, I posted about our doeling, Andy, having a turned under lower eyelid. This is a minor birth defect, but it can cause blindness, as the eyelashes scratch the cornea, and eventually, the damage turns the eye milky and the goat goes blind.

We did not want to take Andy to the vet if we could avoid it, so we tried pulling the eyelid into proper position and glueing it in place with superglue. The idea was that by the time the glue wore off, the muscles around the eyelid would be stretched so that it wouldn’t turn under anymore. The glued eyelid looked a bit uncomfortable, but I’m sure it was much better than having the eyeball damaged further.

Andy had not been a very playful kid up until this point, and seemed to spend a lot of time lying down. Immediately after having the eyelid glued, however, she started running around a lot more. I don’t know if it was because she was no longer in pain, or if she could see better, but within a couple of days, she was bouncing on the old tire and playing king of the castle with the other kids.

I had thought that the damage to the eye would make Andy blind, as we did not catch this right away, and her eye had a large milky patch by the time we did the repair. However, it the cloudy part seems to have healed completely, and is now clear. There is a dark spot on the iris where the milky patch was, but I don’t believe it affects Andy’s vision at all, and I don’t know if it was caused by the damage to her eye. The superglue did its job very well, so the eyelid no longer turns under, and Andy now looks completely normal.