Bloodsuckers (Parasite Problems)

Dairy goats are plagued by parasites. It's just a fact. Some areas of the country are worse than others, and in some areas resistance has become a problem; in other areas its less serious. But anyone who raises dairy goats will have to develop a parasite protocol and be on the lookout for signs of infestation.

I've had my troubles with parasites before - our wet weather and lack of hard freezes some winters contributes to the issue. We've had lungworms and stomach worms and coccidia. For the most part, these have been passing problems, and with vigilant treatment otherwise healthy goats shake off the effects and continue to thrive. I do know by now, however, what a wormy goat looks like.

-Diarrhea. Primary symptom. May be intermittent or constant.

- Skinny. Weight loss is the main symptom (after diarrhea) and it happens not just because the parasites leech energy from the host, but because if the host is losing enough blood they will become anemic and then the rumen doesn't get properly perfused, doesn't work correctly, and you get malabsorption syndrome. Then it doesn't matter how much quality food you are feeding, the goats can't benefit from it.

- anemia symptoms: lethargy, pale gums and conjunctiva

- lowered milk production, if they are in milk

- rough, coarse coat. I don't know why this happens.

In the middle of winter, when it's cold, and all the forage is gone and the goats are subsisting on just hay, and they are pregnant, it's fairly normal for them to lose a little weight. But they shouldn't get really thin. This past winter my goats kept losing weight no matter what I fed them. In fact, they were skinny as rail fences, and generally looked run down and wormy. They started pooping green glop, instead of nice clean pellets. I figured I had worms and dosed everyone with the standard medicine, Ivermectin.

When they didn't improve after some time, I repeated the ivermectin, and when they still didn't improve I thought I might have some resistant worms on my hands and switched to a different wormer that works by a totally different action.

Well they just kept losing weight. Spring came, they gave birth (Flopsy to quadruplets again) and the babies were all healthy, but the moms went downhill, trying to feed all those insatiable little monsters. I brought fecal samples to the vet and, maddeningly, they came out clean. Negative for everything. Repeat fecals came out clean as well.

I discussed the issue with my vet, on the phone, but all he suggested was increasing their ration of grain and buying some alfalfa hay. He seemed to think it was a feed issue, and indeed it certainly looked as though my poor goats were starving to death. He said "Parasites are not your problem," but I knew he was wrong. I know an anemic goat when I see one.

I don't know when the light dawned. Maybe it was when spring was far enough advanced that I started letting the goats out to graze in the front, and began spending a lot more time in close proximity with them than I did in the winter, when I would just go out for a few minutes twice a day for chores. I noticed that their coats weren't just rough, but that they actually had bald patches and that they were rubbing themselves along the fences. BINGO! A lightbulb went off in my head.

Not all parasites are internal. There are external parasites as well. Lice. Probably brought here by the buck I used to serve them last fall.

As the parent of three children who went to public school, I have had my fair share of experience with human head lice. As obnoxious and disgusting as they are, in people, lice are not dangerous. They do not carry and dangerous diseases, and being confined to a small percentage of our total surface area, they can't really suck enough blood to do us great harm. In goats, however, the case is different.

A serious lice infestation can act exactly as a serious internal parasite infestation - the insects can suck enough blood to cause serious anemia, and then all the sequelae are the same as that of a worm-induced anemia - malabsorption syndrome, weight loss, even death by starvation. My poor goats were being sucked dry by thousands of tiny vampires.

Luckily, the treatment is easy and cheap. It's actually the exact same medicine used in people - Permethrin - but at a higher concentration. You can buy it at the feed store under the name "Ultraboss," You dose the animals at 3mL/100lbs at a 5% concentration, laying down a line along their spines, just like applying flea medicine to dogs. As in people, it requires a minimum of two doses given two weeks apart, because Permethrin kills live lice but not eggs. Now my goats have received three treatments, and I may still have to give them a fourth. This was a very heavy infestation.

Almost immediately they began to improve. Their energy level went up quickly, and they began to gambol about and bounce like healthy goats do, instead of hobbling around arthritically. Milk production skyrocketed (another post will follow - I am drowning in milk). Their coats began to fill out and regain their gloss. Only the diarrhea is still hanging around. I think that probably the severe anemia actually did some damage to their rumens and it will simply take some time for them to heal and perform optimally again. That's just a supposition. If the diarrhea persists for another couple of weeks, I will have to bite the bullet and actually have the vet out to look at them.

But for now, I feel pretty proud of myself. Yes, it took me a while, but I diagnosed the problem despite poor veterinary advice, and was able to treat my ladies and help them get better. It makes me trust my eye and my instinct better than before. Little belittle, I am becoming a real farmer.

for more information about lice in goats:

http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/SP/MG/Documents/SLIDES/External%20Parasites.pdf

Cold Casulties

We have no snow on the ground - this picture is from a few years ago - but the past week has been intensely cold. Cold for this part of the country, of course; I know that for many of you, 15 or 20 degrees fahrenheit is downright balmy in February. Our position on a high, bare hill near the water makes things extra chilly around here. We get the unobstructed wind off the sound and with the windchill it feels even colder.

The animals have been suffering some. We haven't finished rebuilding the chicken coop and the poor birds are more exposed than I would like. The other day we left the door open so that they could seek better shelter inside the bigger barn with the rest of the animals. That maybe wasn't such a good idea: the next morning I found a chewed-up leg, just the leg, from one of the speckled hens. I don't know what kind of predator caught her, but it was something cold and hungry, that's for certain.

Rosie Pony's eyes, which were looking much better for a few weeks, are back to being all gummy and sticky, and I think the cold wind has a lot to do with it. I don't want to bathe her face in this weather. Even if I use hot water, she'll get chilled within minutes. Other than that issue, the ponies are the least affected by the cold of any of the animals. They are a little chubby and have warm, fluffy coats. The other day I wasn't wearing gloves, and halfway through chores my hands were so cold I slid them up under Poppy's mane to warm up. It was so warm and toasty! I didn't expect that a horse's mane was such an excellent insulator.

The goats, on the other hand, are not as cold hardy. The pregnant ladies are losing weight, even with extra grain and alfalfa pellets. They will be fine - this cold snap won't last much longer - but the little buckling, Haboob, is in serious trouble. There is something wrong with the little guy, and I don't know what. He never did grow very much, and everybody picks on him. Poppy, the biggest bully on the farm, even bit a chunk right out of his ear! I knew he was thin, but I didn't realize how thin until Homero came in a few days ago and told me he was worried. Haboob had fallen down.

The poor little guy's bones are practically sticking through his skin. I'm not sure what's wrong with him, but it's not just cold and hunger. He's a case of failure to thrive, and the cold might do him in. I put a jacket on him and closed him up in the warmest area I have with unlimited food and water for a few days. I also wormed him. He seems better off for now, but I worry about him. He's never going to be robust.

Meanwhile, I'm carrying water in buckets and feeding everybody extra hay. Inside the house, we are keeping warm with hot soup and wool sweaters, because we are getting pretty low on propane and need to conserve. I set the thermostat at 62 during the day, but it never feels that warm! Why is it that 62 degrees on a sunny day in April feels like heaven, but 62 degrees inside my house on a cold day in February feels freezing? The only ways to keep warm are 1) to take a hot bath, or 2) to go outside for a while and then come back in.

Very Sad Day (Goodbye, Django)

Django in happier days

This morning the results of my herd testing for CAE and CL came in. All my goats are negative for CL (so the hole in the goat was not a CL abscess), and all goats but one are negative for CAE. The positive result was, of course, Django. Django hasn't been a really healthy goat in a few years, and I attributed that to the aftereffects of her severe overeating illness - and I'm sure that played a part. But the other part is that she has a chronic debilitating disease.

In some ways, this actually makes me feel a little bit better. It may seem strange but now I know that her consistently below-par condition was not the result of below-par care on my part. It explains her thinness despite excellent forage, her slowness, her poor coat, all of it. It may even, indirectly, explain the abscess: goats with CAE spend a great deal of time lying down, which would naturally tend to cause a pressure ulcer in that location over time. Poor Django! She really has been a valiant goat - the energy it must have taken her to throw triplets year after year and produce for them, all while battling a nasty virus like CAE!

Well, she will soon be out of her pain. Homero is out digging a hole right now, and when it is deep enough, we will shoot her and put her in it. It's sad, actually sadder and more difficult than I thought it would be, but it's absolutely necessary. Transmission of CAE is almost exclusively vertical from dam to kid in the colostrum. Lateral transmission of CAE from adult to adult is very rare (which explains why my other does are negative after living with Django in close quarters for years) but it can happen. But even if I were assured it were impossible, I would still put her down. She is uncomfortable now, but soon she would be in pain every day. Also, of course, all of her kids would be CAE positive, and nobody would want to buy any kid from my farm - a position I totally agree with. I intend to maintain a clean herd, by any means necessary.

Damn it smarts, though. Even Homero, normally quite unemotional when it comes to life and death questions about animals, is feeling it. He calls Django "Cirquera," or Circus Goat, and liked to hold up food and have her stand up and follow him on two legs.




Django Today

Well. I can't think of much more to say. Django was a great goat and she gave us many dozens of gallons of milk over the years. I enjoyed watching her antics, and I loved watching her kids gallivanting around. Luckily, most of those kids were meat animals. I can only think of one doeling that we sold of hers that might still be alive. If I can find that person's number (doubtful) I will call her and warn her not to breed that baby.

It's all part of farming. That's what Homero says.

Hole in the Goat Update (When to Cull?)

The vet finally called me back. He said that while it was hard to tell from just a photo, the wound did not look like CL. Just as some of my readers commented, the lack of pus and the location both argued against it. He suggested, just as some of you did, that it was most likely a splinter of some sort that became infected and formed an abscess. He told me that that particular spot, at the end of the breastbone, is where the goat puts the most pressure when she lays down. He said that older goats or thin goats often wear down that spot and get pressure wounds. Most likely, my middle aged, thin goat laid on something sharp.

Nonetheless, I've decided I should have my entire herd tested for CAE and CL. Although I bought goats from tested herds, I have not done any testing myself and it's been over four years now. I can't advertise anything about the CAE or CL status of my goats truthfully at this point, and I do want to be able to say I have a clean herd. So, it's time to test. The vet is coming on thursday to take blood samples and at that time he will look at Django's chest as well. In the meantime, I am washing it out twice a day with a dilute iodine solution. It's pretty gross. We are also not using any of her milk at least until we know what we are dealing with.

Assuming that Django (and the rest) come back negative for CAE and CL, I still have a decision to make. Django is not a robust goat. She was perfectly healthy until, three years ago, she got into the grain and ate herself so sick that she almost died. Goats can quite easily die from overeating carbohydrate rich food - grains of any kind but most especially chicken food. Django was at death's door, and only recovered very slowly. For a whole year, she was very ill. She had a severely damaged rumen and was almost blind from the vitamin B deficiency that resulted. She became prone to infections and more vulnerable to worms. She hobbled slowly about, not keeping up with the herd and barely keeping herself alive.

I should have culled her.

I should have culled her then. I felt so guilty for leaving the grain unsecured, for not taking good care of her, for letting her get sick. The least I could do was give her a decent chance to recover... right? And she did recover, not wholly, and not quickly, but she came back. Her vision returned, with daily vitamin B shots. She keeps up with the herd now. And she has thrown triplets and successfully raised them two years in a row, which is not something a very weak goat can do. But she is not and never will be the glossy, plump, energetic animal she was before she got sick.

And now she has this ugly wound, which has clearly been around for a long time without healing. Again - she's not actually sick - no fever, no infection - but she isn't healthy, either. She could probably limp along for the natural lifespan of a goat, some six to eight more years, and have a middling quality of life. She would even continue to provide me with the benefit of more kids and more milk. But should she?

Or should she be culled? My herd would be healthier without her. Removing her would relieve some stress on the pasture. It's one less animal to buy hay, grain and medicine for. And there's another, unpleasant reason. She's embarrassing. Her gimpy, straggly presence in my herd is embarrassing. She makes it look like I don't have healthy animals, like I don't care well for them. This is an ego thing, I guess, but when people visit my far, (especially if they are coming to look at an animal I have for sale) I don't want them to see an old, skinny, scraggly goat. I want them to see a lot of fat, sassy, shiny animals leaping about.

When is it the right time to cull an animal? Is there ever a right time if the animal in question is not suffering? Should animals only be put down to put them out of misery, or does the goal of improving the herd justify the culling of any substandard animal?

What do you think?

What The @$&! is That? (WARNING-graphic picture)

My doe Django has something horribly, horribly wrong with her. You are all going to judge me for letting something so terrible go on for so long, but I swear I knew nothing about it until yesterday. In my defense, it is in a very difficult place to see - on her chest, low down between her front legs. This spot is not visible with a goat in any normal goat-postures. I even trimmed her hooves last week without seeing this awful thing. Homero is the one that finally noticed it.

Here ya go - if anyone has the faintest inkling what the heck is wrong with my goat, please let me know!



I e-mailed this photo to my vet, along with the information that Django is eating and behaving normally, nursing 12 week old twins, afebrile, apparently not in any pain, and five years old. The wound itself has clearly been there for a while - it has thick, indurated edges and is non-tender. Django didn't move a muscle even when I stuck a q-tip a full inch inside her chest and wiggled it around to get a sample of exudate for the vet. There pretty much isn't any exudate - neither blood nor pus. Nor is there any smell.

It's just a great bloody baffling hole right in the middle of the goat.

So far no word from the vet. I think I'll call.

Beautiful, Difficult Day (Beating Myself Up)

This morning dawned bright and clear, with that crystalline sharpness that follows a hard frost. On my way out to the animals, I could see my breath puffing out thick and cottony white. The water buckets were frozen over, and I knew I'd have to fill them with warm water from the house, because the hose would be frozen solid. The mountains were putting on a show, magnified, knife-edged, and blindingly white in the early morning sun.

The triplets had an appointment to get their horn-buds burned off, so I grabbed a big cardboard box and stuffed it full of clean hay. When I walked into the barn, Iris and two of her babies jumped and up and followed me, but the third baby lay limp and still on the straw. It was my favorite one; the littlest doeling with the big white patch on top of her head. I thought she was dead when I picked her up; her head lolled obscenely and her legs were stiff and cold. Then she bleated and began to make feeble paddling motions. Her head was bent back sharply over her spine and her eyes were upward-turned and glazed. To me, it looked like she'd had some sort of major neurological event. It also looked like she was dying.

As I already had an appointment 30 minutes hence, I simply bundled her into the box along with her siblings and set out for the vet. The box full of goats was on the passenger seat next to me; I could see that the healthy babies were trampling their sick little sister. That made me feel ill, so I pulled over and picked up the baby and cuddled her against my belly as I drove. It was shocking how cold she was. She did not have the warmth of life in her at all. If she hadn't occasionally bleated, I would have thought she had expired.

Arriving at the vet's, I explained the situation and sat down to wait while they took her in the back. It was hypothermia. To make a long story short, my little goat had frozen in the cold snap - while her siblings had not- because she was the runt. As the smallest, weakest animal since birth, she couldn't fight her way to the teat as often as the others. She wasn't getting enough calories to maintain her body temperature when the mercury dropped thirty points. The vet fully expected her to be dead in a very short time - he told me her heart was only beating once every twenty seconds. Nonetheless, he bundled her up under heat lamps with hot water bottles on either side of her thin little rib cage, and she kept breathing - twice every minute or so. She just kept breathing. After an hour (during which we burned the horn buds off of the other two babies), he told me she was sitting up on her chest and her temperature had risen to 98 degrees. Twenty minutes earlier her temperature had been too low for the thermometer to register. It goes down to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. She has demonstrated a suck reflex and taken an ounce of milk through a syringe. The vet suggested I name her "Lazarus."

He asked me if her mother was thin - and I had to admit that yes, Iris is quite thin. I have noticed that this year her bag never did really fill out the way I would like. A heavy blanket of guilt settled over my shoulders as I realized that this was all my fault. I haven't been supplementing the pregnant does with as much grain as they need, because it is such a damn hassle - all four goats crowd me and push and shove with such strength that they have actually knocked me over more than once - and I am not a lightweight. What I do is shovel up about two pounds of "Super Goat" grain and set the dish out on the ground and let them shove each other around until it's gone. I don't know who is getting how much, but clearly, Iris hasn't been getting enough because she isn't producing enough milk for three babies. Last year she easily did. The new protocol is to lock Iris and the remaining babies in the Mama Barn for at least another week, where they will stay warmer and not waste a lot of energy keeping their temperatures up. I bought a few bales of high quality alfalfa and Iris has access to as much as she likes for the next few days.

Meanwhile, Lazarus (Lizzie for short) is in a box next to a space heater in our bedroom. I put an ad on Craigslist looking for goat's milk and heard from a kind gentlemen right away who gave me some free of charge. Lizzie is taking the warmed milk 5 cc's at a time through a syringe. I have some nipples and tomorrow I will try her on a bottle.

Here's the thing. Any warm-blooded animal whose heart beat only once every twenty seconds for a couple of hours straight is likely to have sustained quite a bit of brain damage. Indeed, Lizzie is "acting neurological -", pointing her head upwards and staring, yawning, and falling over. The vet was honest with me; he said that he could keep her overnight, pump her full of fluids, do his damndest... but... truth to tell, he didn't think it was worth it. Her chances of making a full recovery were very slight. "However," he said, "I thought she'd be dead six hours ago, so you never know. Sometimes they surprise you."

"I appreciate your candor," I said, "but to be honest... oh this sounds so bad... I'm not in the business of keeping invalid goats alive."

"I totally get it." he said. "Why don't you call me on Monday and if she hasn't made major improvements, I'll put her down for you."

And there we are. I fucked up. I didn't feed my pregnant doe right; I didn't pay close enough attention to how the babies were doing; I didn't read the weather report, and now I have a brain-dead goat to show for it. A perfectly lovely little doeling who was as healthy as a horse yesterday afternoon. Now she will either live or die but never be the same, and her suffering is due to my laziness and stupidity. If she has to be killed on Monday, I will have killed her. If she lives a diminished life, I will have diminished it.

Meanwhile, I am sitting here resenting the fact that I have to get up every three hours during the night to feed her. I am incorrigible.

Poppy Update

The farrier was back again yesterday. He removed her big pink shoes and trimmed them a little and then replaced them, adding another layer of big pink foam underneath. He tapped her hooves, testing for pain, and found that she is only very slightly sore. He said she's a 1 on a scale of 4. I asked if he thought X-rays were necessary and he said no, not at this point. His recommendations are to keep her indoors for another day or two, finish the course of anti-inflammatories, and come back in a week to check her feet again. He said most likely at that point she can go barefoot, but if she isn't better then he will have to put wooden and plastic shoes on her.

He also said that I absolutely MUST separate Rosie from Poppy. AT 20 months old, Poppy is still nursing now and then and Rosie totally lets her. The extra calories are doing her no good at all, especially right now. It's time to forcibly wean.

So poor Rosie is all by herself in the sacrifice area, getting rained on, while Poppy and the goats are bundled up warm, and dry in the big barn.

Poppy in Trouble (A Girl and her Pony)

A couple of years ago, I rescued a shetland mare named Rosie. I had stopped in on a whim at a horse sale in my neighborhood and there, among the fine Arabians and Pureblooded Thoroughbreds, was this dumpy little grey pony with a couple of half-grown foals at her side. The woman running the auction could only tell me that her name was Rosie, she was about eight years old, had been born and lived her life in a free-running and free-breeding herd on a large Eastern Washington ranch, that she was halter-broke but no more, and that she was mine for $50. Otherwise she was headed to the local auction, which is more or less a death sentence.

I bought her, on condition that she be delivered, since I don't own a trailer. For some time, I entertained fantasies of turning her into a riding pony (Pony Love), but fairly soon realized that Rosie was far too wild to ever be more than a pasture pet. Nonetheless, I was overjoyed at having a pony again for the first time since I was twelve years old, and at the possibility of giving my children the chance to know equine love.

Nobody told me - because I presume nobody knew - that Rosie was pregnant. The spring after she came to live with us, she gave birth to a beautiful chestnut filly with a wide white blaze whom we christened Poppy. Poppy has been a delight since the day she was born - at first awkward and adorable, and then amazing us with a rate of growth that quickly outstripped her dam and made us wonder just what the hell sort of equine giant Rosie had mated with. I have come to feel blessed by the chance to work with Poppy from her childhood (foal-hood?) and, if I am diligent, to provide my own children with the life-affirming relationship with a horse that I enjoyed as a child. There's a story for another day - but for now, let's just say that my relationship with a pony when I was six to twelve years old was one of the most fulfilling bonds I've ever known - even now I remember that relationship with a tenderness and love that I can't apply to any other relationship in my life.

That might sound odd. If so, substitute "dog" for "pony" and think of popular tales like "Old Yeller." A Boy and his Dog is a theme celebrated in American literature. The theme of a girl and her horse is less celebrated, but I assure you the bond is just as strong. I have plans for Poppy Pony, and those plans involve making available to my children the great love than can exist between a girl and her horse.

Not to mention, Poppy is just a total sweetheart. She has grown into a big strong pony some twelve hands high, sturdy, bright, affectionate, and willing. She is a deep, bright red with a somewhat curly hide; a bright eye, and a muscular body with a deep chest and a strong arched neck. She likes to lick and nibble like a puppy. She stands for the farrier, allows injections, and kets me lift all four of her feet. I personally adore her more than it feels seemly to say.

When the farrier came two weeks ago, he told me that Poppy had been into something: she had blood in all four of her toes and that's a big deal. He trimmed up her feet so as to put the least amount of pressure possible on her toes and told me to be on the lookout for any signs of pain - bobbing her head when she walked, for example, or general stiffness.

Foundering, or laminitis ( Laminitis Page) is caused almost exclusively by an overdose of rich feed like grain or apples. I have no idea how Poppy might have gained access to such rich feed - our goat and chicken food is kept locked securely in a separate barn. The only thing I can think of is that Homero's nieces, who were here for some six weeks and who loved to go visit the horses, may have made a habit of feeding Poppy large amounts of grain. If they did feed her too much, it's entirely my own fault for not laying down the ground rules. Also, the recent hard freeze may have some of the blame - even a healthy horse can acquire similar symptoms by running over hard, uneven ground. If Poppy had some laminitis caused by overfeeding and then spent a lot of time running around over the hard-frozen ground, she could be exhibiting severe symptoms from multiple causes.

Whatever the cause, Poppy now has a medium-severe case of laminitis, and has been visited by the vet and the farrier multiple times over the last few days. They gave her a set of hoof-pads made out of thick pink foam insulation strapped on with duct tape. I will take a picture, I promise. She looks entirely silly. If she is not substantially better (as measured by...?) within a couple of days, then the vet will be back to take X-rays of her hooves. I am giving her anti-inflammatories morning and evening and confining her to the soft-floored barn.

Wish me luck. Horsey people, please give advice. I love this pony beyond words, and I want to relive her suffering and preserve her usefulness both. Thank you -

aimee

The Fickleness of Memory (I got the Wormy Wormy Blues)

We had milk goats when I was a child. It was my job - along with my younger brother - to feed the goats and water them every morning before we went to school. I remember many a frosty morning lugging plastic milk jugs full of warm water before the sun came up. The hose didn't reach. One early morning (must have been the dead of winter - it was full dark) my brother and I saw a very strange thing in the sky. It looked like a satellite - just a star moving slowly in a straight line - but it had a trail of red flames bucking rapidly up and down. Remember that, bro?

I remember milking - though not as a regular chore. It was more of "when we felt like it" thing. I remember the cats lining up for squirts of milk whenever I milked. I remember the feeling of hot foamy milk squirted directly from the teat into my mouth. I was a generous (not to say wasteful) milker. One for the the bucket, one for the cats, one for me; one for the bucket, one for the cats, one for me.... I remember the one time Dad made cheese and being very upset that I didn't get to taste any before it was all gone.

I even remember when Lily the goat - our first ever - was attacked by wild dogs or coyotes and had a big muscle in the back of her rear leg torn out. She survived, but was never the same. I remember when Peanuts the buck was attacked by dogs while staked out in the blackberries. He was killed. After that my Dad (or Mom?) sat out with a shotgun for a few nights and peppered the dogs with birdshot. I remember when Daisy got out and ate so much rhododendron she was poisoned and how we found her lying on her side, horribly bloated.

I remember lots of frolicking in the springtime with baby goats, and how they leaped and twisted in the air. I remember there was one baby goat who could climb the ladder up into the hayloft of the barn. I do not remember how we got him down. I remember that all our goats had botanical names - Daisy, Fern, Clover, Dandelion, Bachelor's Button. I remember that I tried for years to see baby goats being born, and I never quite made it. I remember one year waking up in the pre-dawn light (my room was the closest to the barn) and hearing soft bleating sounds. I ran downstairs and out to the barn without my shoes on. Daisy ( a white Saanen) had given birth to triplets just moments before and they were just beginning to try and stand up. That was as close as I ever got.

Here's what I do not remember:

Anyone trimming any hooves.

Taking any goats to the vet, ever.

Problems with birthing.

Medicating the goats with anything at all.

Now, I was a child. I was only eleven when we moved off the farm. My mom put an ad in the paper for "free goats - first come, first serve" and we gave all the goats away in fifteen frantic minutes. It's entirely possible that a lot of things happened that I just don't have any memory of. But I think not. My mom does not remember having any problems with sick goats, either. Her memory isn't much more reliable than mine, but put our recollections together and they do begin to add up.

Most likely, we were utterly irresponsible goat owners. Mom was working seventy hour weeks after the divorce, and I'm sure the goats were the last thing on her list of priorities. For all I know, our goats were walking textbooks on parasites. But that's not what I remember. I remember vibrantly healthy goats, when they weren't being chewed on by dogs or poisoned by bad plants. I suspect that thirty years ago there were not the problems with CAE, CL, and parasites that exist today.

Today, it's a given that all goats have worms. The best you can hope for is that the worms are not resistant and can be controlled by relatively benign medications. My goats have worms. Lots of worms. I've had lungworms, stomach worms, and worms that don't even have names yet. My feeling has always been that a complete lack of parasites isn't possible: instead I should strive to have healthy, well-nourished goats who are capable of harboring a reasonable number of parasites without becoming symptomatic. My vet agrees with me.

Well, that road has closed. Despite my best efforts, despite using de-wormers strictly according to my veterinarian's directions, my goats have developed resistant worms. My does were wormed after kidding - as per instructions - with Ivermectin. At that point in time they were asymptomatic. A few weeks later I noticed that they all had diarrhea. Bad, green, liquid diarrhea. I took fecals to the vet. Stomach worms - a heavy load. Since they had been wormed recently with Ivermectin, I used Safeguard this time - again, on the advice of my vet. I wormed them all thoroughly - using a high dose and repeating it for four days.

Repeat fecals two weeks later revealed a virtually unchanged number of stomach worms. They were resistant. How did the resistance develop? I don't know. I did rent a buck from another farm last fall, but we coordinated worming schedules and both sides should have been worm free at the time of transfer. Other than that my herd has been closed for more than a year.

Oh shit that's not true. Just remembered, I also rented out Cloud for a month as a buck to a nearby farm. But Cloud is the only one who has remained asymptomatic this whole time! He is fat and glossy, pooping pellets and leaping around like a racehorse. The does, in contrast, are skinny as rail fences (poor Django is trying to feed triplets!). Petting them feels like petting a barbed wire fence. I feel like the world's worst goat owner. I can't let anyone see my goats right now or they would assume I am starving them to death. In actual fact, I am feeding them free-choice high quality local hay (orchard grass/alfalfa mix) plus eight cups of grain daily for the milkers, and nearly unlimited browse on grass and blackberries.

Today - again on the advice of my vet - I wormed them all - does, buck, and kids - with Quest. Quest is a whole different class of dewormer and my vet says she has had good luck using it with resistant worm populations. I hope it works. Quest has a month long meat withdrawal time, and an unknown milk withdrawal time, but probably at least two weeks. That's okay - my does will need at least two weeks to gain weight and get healthy before I start to milk them again anyway.

So no more milk products for now - no milk, yogurt, or cheese. Just wait. Just wish them luck.

Fried Baby Goat Brains, and Farmers vs Vets

Cirrus is the name we decided to give to the beautiful black and white spotted buckling out of Iris. He, along with everyone else, got his horn buds burned off day before yesterday by Goat Lady, a local farmer. Today he is wandering around mostly blind, feverish, and in pain, unable to nurse, because his brain got fried (that's vernacular - actually he has acute cerebral inflammation and increased intracranial pressure as a result of too much time under the red-hot iron.).

I took him to the vet today and he is being treated with Banamine for pain and inflammation, and an injectable anti-inflammatory that starts with "dex-" and a long-term injected antibiotic. Most likely he will make a slow but full recovery. As the inflammation goes down, the pressure on his optic nerve will decline and he should regain his sight. Maybe three weeks.

All the other baby goats are doing fine. Cirrus got extra time under the iron because I told Goat Lady I was thinking of keeping him as a buck, and so she wanted to make extra sure she got 100% of the horn buds burned off. Everyone else got 25-30 seconds per side and Cirrus got that plus an extra 20 seconds per side on a second pass. Vet said that was just too much.

Also, the vet is very careful, when she disbuds, to apply the irons in 10 second bursts, and to remove them and let the skull cool down before reapplying. The total time is the same - 25 to 30 seconds per side - but Goat lady does it all at once and the vet does in three separate passes with time in between.

Now I'm going to say a few things that may be controversial. Many goat folks, I've learned, don't like to take their goats to the vet and prefer to take them to other farmers or do most of their doctoring themselves. I have heard the sentiment expressed many times that vets just aren't taught much about goats in school and not many vets are knowledgeable about them. Most long-term goat farmers I've spoken to feel very strongly that they know more about goat health than their vet does.

This may be largely true - certainly I've heard from a couple of vets themselves that small ruminants in general get little time in school and that most of that time is spent on sheep. And obviously a person like Goat Lady, who has worked exclusively with goats for well over thirty years is going to have more hands on experience with goats than just about any vet out there.

I don't doubt that old timers have more "goat sense" than vets do as a general rule.

However. I have also heard goat farmers express the most appalling ignorance of basic physiology and even basic biology. Few have any formal education in medicine or in the life sciences in general. They are basically laymen when it comes to medicine. I'm NOT trying to disparage anybody here - certainly Goat Lady's operation looks fantastic: clean, organized, and lots of spectacularly healthy looking goats. Most goat farmers are excellent nurses and animal husbandrymen, they care about their animals and treat them well. They know a great deal about feed and supplements, pasture management and poisonous weeds, corrective hoof trimming and just about every aspect of day-to-day animal care.

But they don't understand cell biology, pharmacology, the evolution of resistance, the difference between bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections, or the complex pathophysiological processes involved in diseases.

If they did, they'd be vets.

Wednesday when I took my goats to be disbudded by Goat Lady, I told her how the vet disbuds, taking breaks after each ten seconds, and asked her why she did it the way she did. "I've never had any problems," was her answer. That is a very typical farmer attitude: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The way I've always done it is good enough. This is how I was taught by someone else. Most of the time, this is good enough. Goats are pretty tough customers, basically. Also, in general I believe in the principle of benign neglect. I think premature intervention is the cause of a great deal of unnecessary complication and expense. I like to provide my goats with their basic necessities and leave them alone, for the most part. They tend to do just fine.

I'm not sure what my point is, here. I've sat here for fifteen minutes trying to write the next sentence. Is it that I trust the formal education of veterinarians more than the experience-based wisdom of farmers? No; that wouldn't be true. Is it that I want access to the technology and vast stores of information available through the the vet? Yes; that's closer.

The truth is I want both. I want to be wise. I want (and this so transcends goats or farming, this is everything, now) to grow my own store of experience based knowledge, the kind of wisdom that can ONLY be acquired through living. I want to be able to draw on a deep well of knowledge won through firsthand experience.

But I also want to be able to draw from other wells. No man is an island, right? What kind of bullheaded hubris is it to insist on working with only your own firsthand knowledge? Why, there's only one word for that attitude: STOOPID. I sure don't want to be stoopid.

I'm a nurse. I have a BSN. I've been through five years of University at a pretty prestigious school and I graduated with a damn good average. Before that I was a straight A student all through my scholastic career. I'm not trying to brag; I'm trying to explain that I am already biased toward book-learning, toward traditional, mainstream, formalized methodology. Towards vets, in other words. When I have a problem, I run as fast as I can towards science.

I'm actually trying to balance that tendency by paying more mindful attention to my own experience. It's actually easier for me to learn from the printed page than it for me to learn from experience. In school I was a wunderkind, but I'm kind of an idiot in the real, three-dimensional world. Sometimes I think that my decision to move to the country and start farming was all about trying to develop my hands and my heart for a while instead of just my brain.

Well. I've wandered pretty far afield from Cirrus and his issues. I hope the little guy makes it. I will certainly seek out the advice of farmers as well as vets in trying to help him. Wish him luck.

Things I Didn't Know About Worms

I must have misheard the lady on the phone yesterday who called to give me the results of Iris' fecals. I thought she said "nine" stomach worms and 1 coccidia, which would be pretty darn clean results. Actually she said "79" stomach worms and 1 coccidia.

Seventy-nine is a pretty high number, although not spectacularly high. The symptoms she is showing are generally worse than would be expected with that number, but it makes sense that she would be sicker than your average goat because she has recently been through the tremendous stress of carrying triplets to term, a rough delivery, and trying to instantly produce enough milk for three very hungry, rapidly growing babies. That's an awful lot of hard work. Doubt I could do it without getting sick, either!

But the worrying thing is that Iris was wormed - twice - recently. She was wormed right before breeding, and she was wormed after delivery. Both times with Ivermectin. That means that the worms she has have developed resistance to Ivermectin and now we need to switch wormers and hope they don't develop multi-drug resistance.

I knew resistant parasites are a problem. They are a major problem in goats. What I didn't know, and the vet patiently explained to me, is that resistance develops inside individual animals, not necessarily in all the animals on a given farm. He said that in any given herd, twenty percent of the animals, give or take, will be unusually susceptible, just because of their genetic makeup or other unknown factors. These twenty percenters are responsible for shedding over eighty percent of the parasite eggs. Therefore, rather than treating all the goats with the second-line wormer (which would only serve to help the worms inside them develop resistance too), we should only treat the problem animal. Iris has always been rather delicate of constitution. She is always the first to develop symptoms and the last to have her symptoms resolve. My guess is she's just one of those twenty percenter animals.

So for now, the treatment plan is:

- worm with Safeguard three days running

- bring new fecals in in two weeks

- supplement local hay with high quality alfalfa and make sure she has enough grain.

If the fecals show improvement in two weeks, but her symptoms do not, then we could be dealing with Johnne's disease, which is a whole different situation, and one I don't want to think about right now.

Iris Update

The vet wants to see Iris. Her fecals were actually pretty clean, so we don't know what's causing these symptoms. Now the question becomes - pay the exorbitant farm-visit rate, or put a goat with explosive diarrhea in my van?

Got My Goat Back

Storm Cloud, AKA the world's prettiest goat, returned to the farm yesterday.

I rented him out to a neighbor as a stud a month ago (which is when this photo was taken) even though he was pretty young still and I wasn't sure if he'd be able to "do the deed." I warned them that he was unproven and said I'd give them all the time they needed and unlimited breedings for $50 - a steal if he managed to breed all their does.

Meanwhile, I myself rented a mature, proven buck (Yanto) to breed my own does. He cost me $75 for a month - and as it turns out, I think that Storm had already bred most of my does before he even got here. Iris and Flopsy are both looking EXTREMELY pregnant. In some ways, this is annoying: I don't know when they will give birth, and I may have wasted $75. But in another way, it's very cool: I get a chance to see what kind of kids Storm throws, and I get early kids and milk sooner than I expected.

In any case, if I subtract the $50 stud fee for Storm from the $75 stud fee I paid out for Yanto, my total stud fee for this year is only $25, as compared to $150 last year. That's a big improvement, especially is Iris and Flopsy both throw twins, which looks likely. Iris could even throw triplets, she's that big already.

The only really bad thing is that Storm came back from the other farm with lice. They aren't the kind that are transmissible to humans, but they surely are transmissible top other goats and now I have to treat my whole herd. The dusting powder I get at the farm store works well, and it isn't expensive, so it's only a minor nuisance. That's the main issue of sending your animals off to another farm - you just don't know unless you are willing to become a complete control freak and inspect their animals and demand test results for everything under the sun.

I may get to that point if I feel it necessary, but I'd really rather not.

Flopsy Update #3

Hooray! Finally, this morning, I got all the milk out of Flopsy's right side (not left, as previously, erroneously written). Along with the milk came several incredibly icky clots of hardened milk. I would milk for a while, then a clot would plug up the orifice and I'd have to work at getting it out while the poor goat hollered and kicked. I am still being very gentle, but I'm sure it hurts. 

I did manage to milk her all out this morning. There are definitely more clots in the teat, but the mass has broken up, it's not solid anymore. Now it's as though her teat is full of gravel. I know I'm supposed to be doing this every couple of hours, but how? I'm working today. I could ask Homero but......

The good news is, the goat seems fine. No fever anymore, and she is eating with normal goatish relish. The heat is getting to everybody, though, and everyone is spending most of their time lying down in whatever patch of shade they can find. It's going to get up to nearly one hundred today! I wonder if that's EVER happened before in this area! Not lately. 

The little bucklings are sore throated from yelling for two days now. They just can't believe I'm not going to put them back in with their mothers. I feel for them, I really do. But I can't believe how much milk I'm getting from Iris now that I've pulled her baby off her! A gallon a day, easy. 

I don't really need another milk goat at all with her around. 

Better make cheese.

Flopsy Update #2

I can't milk her! This morning, milk came out. Tonight, nothing! Just a drop or two. The teat is plugged solid. The bag is tight. Aack! Poor goat!

Flopsy Update

The vet says Flopsy has an injury in the teat. Maybe somebody stepped on it, or maybe I injured it myself trying to squeeze out the infected coagulated milk. Either way, now it's full of scar tissue and inflammation as well as infection. 

He wanted me to stop milking entirely on that side, but that advice was totally counter to everything I've ever read or heard about mastitis. Everybody says to have to milk it out. Books say it, goat people say it, everybody! So I called another vet for a second opinion. He also said he couldn't understand why you wouldn't milk it out, even with an injury. Just be extra gentle. He did agree with vet #1, however, that I should get the kid off of her.

So I took a step. Both bucklings, Iris' and Flopsy's, have been permanently separated. They are being forcibly weaned. They are both plenty old enough, but they aren't going to like it. Lots of yelling today and the next couple of days. Also, of course, I am now committed to twice daily milking, like it or not. 

For the farm record:

penicillin 5 cc IM BID x 5 days

milk/massage Q 4hrs

withhold milk 14 days

Mastitis

Flopsy has mastitis in her left teat. I'm taking her to the vet today. So far she's had two doses of IM penicillin and two doses of aspirin for a high fever. Can't milk out the teat. I think they're going to have to irrigate it (yuck.). 

Mastitis can be fatal if you ignore it. I'll keep y'all posted.

Probable Good News

Took Clove to the vet this morning, and he said he very much doubts the lumps are CL-related. Just not in the right spot, no lymph nodes nearby. However he did aspirate with a very fine needle (another clue it probably isn't CL - the pus inside a CL abscess is usually thick and chalky, not thin enough to aspirate with a fine needle.) and we will have definitive results in 48 hours. 

Oh and I was told that CL, at least the superficial type with no involvement of the internal organs, is not a reason not to eat the goat. Since we are going to butcher ourselves, we will know if there is internal organ involvement or not. 

Oh and FYI, a volkswagen beetle is not an approved method of transport for a terrified forty pound buckling. 

Possible Problem

I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but Clove (the buckling we intended for our own personal table this year) has two small, suspicious looking lumps on his shoulders, in the place that would be called his withers if he were a horse. They are hard, non-mobile, and apparently tender.

The conclusion I don't want to jump to, for all you non-goaty folks, is CL. That's a systemic, recurrent infection caused by a soil bacterium. It's quite prevalent in goats, enough so that most reputable breeders test for it yearly, and enough so that I should have insisted on seeing test results on every goat I bought. What it does is cause abscesses, sometimes superficial ones in the lymph nodes and sometimes internal ones on the lungs, liver, and other viscera. While the abscess is encapsulated, it isn't contagious, but when it ruptures, it is extremely contagious. And you don't want it in your soil: it can live six months in the soil and infect any goats hanging around. 

How could he have got it? He's only ever left the farm once - to get his horns burned off - for about two hours. So it must have come from one of my goats. If that's what it is, of course. If my goats have got it, I'll have to cull. Ruthlessly. All of them. 

Oh god, I'm not sure I can handle that. 

So I'd better call the vet and see what to do. Here's the problem: She could aspirate the cyst and culture it for CL, but then it would be "ruptured" and Clove would need to be quarantined until fully healed (or until the results come back negative, I guess). He's only 8 weeks old, he isn't weaned yet. Or, of course, he could be culled. 

There are questions I need to ask the vet. Does CL have any potential impacts on human health? In other words, could we still eat him, assuming the cysts are superficial and can just be peeled off with the skin (oh God what a disgusting thought. Real appetizing, Aimee)? As far as the other goats - none of whom have any lumps or bumps or abnormalities I can find - will a blood test suffice? What about the other kids? I've heard that a CL blood test isn't reliable until 8 months of age. As long as they don't have any cysts, can I just wait and let them grow up without fear for any goats who have tested negative? Or do they need to be quarantined for the next six months?

Aaargh! Goats are supposed to be easy! 

Goat Crisis Part II

I had to leave in the middle of the last post for church. Home now. Okay, as much for my own records (my blog is my farm record, hah!) here is what I'm doing for Xana and how she is responding so far. 

-5 mL injections of B complex TID (IM yesterday, now SQ)

-Drench with molasses-water into which I have crushed 700 mL thiamine and 750 mL calcium with D, TID (this is a pain in the ass. The first and second day she was easy to drench, but now she is so much improved that she is fighting me hard.)

Penicillin injections have been suggested but I'm holding off because her rumen is so screwed up right now, I don't want to do further damage. I guess the idea is kind of a scorched-earth approach: nuke the rumen with antibiotics and then rebuild with probiotics. I'm going straight for the probiotics without the nukes. Probios in the feed and tablespoons of yogurt.

My poor goats. They all have some level of coccidia, which is a bad bacteria that causes diarrhea and weakness. I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out where it came from - well, it is present in all goats to some degree, but not usually in amounts that will make them sick. Why did my goats suffer from such a heavy infection? Why did they keep getting re-infected after treatment?

Finally it came to me. This property used to be a cow-dairy. A heavy intensive dairy with confinement pens and the whole lot. I also know from other clues that the owners were not particularly good husbandry-men nor stewards of the land. Dairy cows - calves, particularly - are very susceptible to coccidiosis. These folks were dairying here for forty years. And Coccidia lives in the soil "basically forever" says my vet.

Of course! This soil was saturated with coccidia before I ever put my goats on it! There is absolutely nothing I can do about that. If I put animals on the land, I will deal with coccidia. All I can do - I think - is make sure my animals are as healthy as possible, so that their systems can cope with the coccidia. This is not a disease that usually harms healthy mature animals. Kids are susceptible, and sick, pregnant, or otherwise immuno-compromised animals are susceptible. I need to make sure that my animals are well nourished, vaccinated, wormed, and generally supremely healthy. Even so, I will most likely need to treat them occasionally, when pregnancy or something else temporarily lowers their immune system.

Is coccidiosis what caused Xana's "goat polio?" I don't know. Did she get ill from a combination of the stress of peak lactation, a heavier-than-normal load of coccidia, a few resistant worms, and the lack of woody browse? I don't know. 

Thank goodness, at least she is responding to treatment. The trembling and staggering is gone. She is much more alert, generally. Her hydration status is good. Her gums and eyelids are pink, although somewhat pale. I think she can see at least a little bit more than she could a few days ago, but I know that her blindness will persist, most likely for several weeks. But she is producing milk and nursing her babies, which is good, because they are at a terrible age to lose their mother: too young to be weaned and too old to learn how to bottle feed. I think she will pull through if I continue the treatment for another week or two. 

These goats are wearing me out.