More Udder Photos

I am so happy with how well Annie's udder is healing, and how Curly's hair is growing back!

I knew they were copper deficient, but I had no idea how deficient they were.

I'll be giving all of the goats a bolus once a month for the rest of the summer, and probably through October.

Photos of Annie's udder over the last three weeks.

24 May 2015, the day I gave the copper bolus.

6 June 2015

16 June 2015

Here's a link to the first post on copper from this year.

Udder Sore

Annie has a sore on her udder. She's had it for a while.

The vet couldn't figure out what it was. She was given a course of antibiotics that didn't do anything.

Topical creams haven't done anything, either. Neither has dosing her with zinc.

I'm hoping that one of the problems may be her copper deficiency.

The sore is about the size of a nickel. It's in a bad spot because it is constantly rubbing against the inside of her leg.

I'm trying some Corona ointment to see if that gives it a little bit of protection from the rubbing. I'm hoping that it will keep it moist as well as kill some of the bacteria and help her heal.

Nothing is wrong with the milk, we checked.

If the copper, worming, and Corona don't do anything over the next 2-3 weeks I'll call the vet again and have her take some skin and test it to see if they can find out what the exact infection is.

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One of our hens has decided that she likes to lay her eggs in the stall next to the hay feeder instead of in the nice nesting boxes that Myles built. I don't know why, but the goats are very careful around her and never seem to break her eggs.

Sprayer for Sanitizing Solution

We had a brilliant idea!

We have been working very hard at spraying down the does, the milk stands, and the milking area of the barn with sanitizing solution.

 We were using a little spray bottle. And in the past we have brought out the sanitizing solution in a bowl to clean off udders before we milk.

But we bumped it up a notch by using a garden sprayer.

I LOVE it! We really spray down udders before we milk, and then we wipe them off with a wash cloth. I'm surprised at how much more dirt we get off using this method.

Vet2Be really loves spraying down everything when we're done. He thinks it's fun to use the sprayer.

Imagine, a 17 year old boy having fun using a garden sprayer to sanitize the milk stands and the floor.

I'm glad it works so well, and I'm glad he works well, too!

Udder Problems

Because of the way this year has hit us we didn't vaccinate against mastitis as we usually do. One of the benefits of using Lysigin is that it also seems to reduce or eliminate staph infections on the doe's udders. This year we didn't do boosters and we didn't vaccinate Misty (Vet2Be's Jr. Best in Show last year).

We did what we could while waiting for the vet to be able to come out about a week after I called her.

I didn't start taking pictures right away. I wish I had. The first set of photos already show some of the healing taking place.

These photos show some healing that has already started. The infection started about 4 days before this photo was taken. The infection started with a few pimples that had pus in them. Then almost overnight (literally), the scab covered quite a bit of area between her two teats.

I started soaking her udder in 1 cup of epsom salts mixed in 1/2 gallon of water with some experimental silver particles for 5 minutes twice a day after milking her out. This isn't the colloidal silver (however high in quality) you can buy at the health food stores, although that would probably work, just not as fast as the new stuff does.

We also continued to wash her udder with an udder wash before we milked her each day.

After soaking her udder we sprayed her with Vetericyn.

We also boosted her immune system with Mineral Max Ultra Paste, which we are able to find at our local CAL Ranch store. I found it a few days later much cheaper (called Mineral Max EAD Paste) at Stearns Vet Outlet, which is a mail order site.  

(update 9/13/12: I called Stearns Vet Outlet today to order more Mineral Max. They said it is no longer being made. The company is coming out with something new..... but the Stearn's Representative didn't know what it was or when it was coming out. She said they had to wait for the manufacturer to contact them.)

We also kept her in a tee-shirt with the sleeve covering her udder. You can see another goat wearing one here. We didn't want dirt getting on her udder, and although it hadn't spread through the herd, we didn't want to chance it spreading either. She got a clean tee-shirt each time we went through 'the ritual' as Prion so aptly named the process!

Two days after the above photo her udder looked like this.

We didn't touch her udder with bare hands, they were gloved just in case we could catch this. We also opened the scabs after each milking to get out any pus. The large sore on the right side of the udder was a hard area that was always filled with pus. The look of the sores made us worry that it might be a staph infection.

This is what her udder looked like the day the vet was able to come. I showed her the 'before' pictures so she would have reference photos to work from.

The vet recommended that we continue to use warm compresses (or soaking is better!) twice a day on her udder, to continue to wash her with a sanitizing solution (chlorhexadine if we wanted to try something different), and to continue to open any scabs to let the infection drain out. The vet gave Misty a shot of Excede, which I had never heard of before. It's a long lasting (5 day) antibiotic.

After reading about it's use in horses, I'm not so sure I would have let her use that on Misty. However, Misty hasn't had any problems with the shot and as of today there is no pus coming out of any of the sores.

The vet said this was a bacterial infection, but she wasn't sure it was staph. She could tell it wasn't a viral infection like Sore Mouth or Orf because none of the kids had it and none of the other goats got it, either.

Soaking the udder! I use a Glad container, the cheap kind you get at the grocery store. I have a timer and I set it for 5-6 minutes. I don't cheat on the time, saving her udder is much too important.

I'm not sure I could soak the udder on a goat other than a Saanen. They are so mild tempered (usually) that they take all kinds of messing-with in stride. She's not thrilled when we pull the scabs off (after soaking) but if I hold her leg up, Vet2Be can take care of the rest without getting kicked in the face.

Vet2Be also goes out in the middle of the afternoon and sprays down her udder with the sanitizing solution again, so she's 'sanitized' three times a day.

We also cleaned out the stalls and put down fresh shavings even though they weren't that messy. We cleaned them out less than a month ago. We wanted to reduce the chance of spreading as best we could.

Every day I run all the milking equipment through the sanitizing cycle on the dishwasher and all the towels and udder cover tee-shirts through the sanitizing cycle on the washing machine.

The next time we see any pimples with pus anywhere on an udder our first response will be to start the soaking right away instead of waiting to see if the goat can fight it off herself.

One other goat had a few pimples on her udder between her teats, but the soaking cleared them up enough that the vet didn't want to take a look at her (and she could have made an easy $40 by looking!)

Oh, and in case you are wondering, we've been throwing the milk away. I haven't even been giving it to the chickens.

As soon as Lysigin is available again (it's on backorder everywhere!) we will get some and give booster shots to all the older does and start Misty on her set of shots as well.

We also vaccinate with J-VAC, which takes care of mastitis caused by e. coli.

Ginger's Udder Cover

Ginger has an allergic skin reaction on her udder. We've been trying to get rid of it and the infection for about 3 years.

Even the vet is at a loss as to what to do.

We've paid more in tests and vet bills and biopsies than the goat is worth in the hopes that we will learn something that will heal her udder and be of future help to Vet2Be.

Earlier this week the smell was horrible! We were almost ready to call the vet to have him put her down.

But we decided to try something we hadn't done before we made "the call."

Often we have washed her udder with plain water and a washcloth, but we've never used a hose on it. That's what we started to do on Wednesday.

And we wanted to cover it with a bandage, which we've never been able to do. How do you stick a bandage on an udder without it coming off?

Here's our idea:

I took an XL tee shirt and cut the sleeves off, leaving the seam ON the shirt (not on the sleeves).

I sewed one sleeve shut at the hem to make a bag. I sewed half of the open end of the sleeve to the bottom of the shirt. Then I attached two pieces of elastic that is 12" long. One end went on the shirt, one end is attached to the udder bag.

After hosing her off twice a day for two days, the smell is much less. She doesn't mind being hosed off (I think that the cold water made the sore feel better).

And she doesn't mind the shirt at all! She seems to like keeping the sore on her udder from rubbing the inside of her leg.

She's the first goat that Vet2Be bought with his own money. And she's the sweetest goat we've ever had! Gentle, kind, loving, and a fantastic milker.

We milked her through for 3 years. And it was worth going out to milk her! The only reason we stopped was because we couldn't get rid of the sores from whatever allergy she has.

(Yes, we've changed bedding, food, everything. Literally everything!)

If anyone is interested in seeing a step-by-step tutorial of how I sewed the shirt, please leave me a comment. I've got a few more to make (I want to have 4 so I don't have to wash so often!) and I don't mind taking photos of the process. It takes about 10 minutes to sew one up, so it's a really quick project!

Udder Results

The veterinarian emailed with the results of the biopsy test.

The results are in and they show a severe chronic response that is suggestive of a topical irritant. The inflammation in the skin layers is very superficial and not typically treated with steroids. So I would rather not give steroids at this time. If she is still doing well and has still shown response to Exenel, then I wouldn't do any other medications right now.

The cause of this was probably a skin reaction to something that was applied to the udder. It was probably something normal that this animal had an abnormal reaction to. I would apply nothing to the udder for the time being. And then we can talk before you want to start milking again.

Let me know if she is still doing well or if you have any other questions.

Our vet is doing some Army training (he's a U.S. Army Veterinarian, too) and he was kind enough to take a few minutes to email. What a great vet!

We haven't stopped milking her. We were giving her milk to the chickens. But now we know there is nothing wrong with the milk, so we are back to using it again!

At this point more of the scabs are healing, turning a light brownish color, and some are falling off. I'm not sure how long it will take for them all to heal, but we are all so happy that there is nothing major wrong with the doe. It will probably just take time to heal.

So this poor girl has endured a 15 month long allergic reaction. No wonder nothing we used helped! She is such a sweet, mild tempered, and patient doe!

Udder Update

Ginger seems to be doing better. It doesn't show very well in the photo because she still has scabs on her udder. But the redness is gone and the scabs are different. I'm assuming that is because the infection is gone, but whatever is causing the allergic reaction isn't. The scabs look as if they are healing at this point, but I'm not going to do the 'Happy Dance' until they are all gone. Maybe I'll do a little 'Happy Dance' if half of them heal and fall off!

After two injections of Exenel (two days worth) she had flakes of skin that peeled off her udder. I'm assuming that was dead skin, perhaps the most irritated skin, that had died and fallen off.

She is still milking 5-6 lbs twice a day. We don't want to dry her off unless the vet asks us to. She's our experimental doe. She kidded out in March 09, so she has been milking continuously for 18 months. We would like to see how long she will milk before she needs to be bred again.

The vet called yesterday. He hasn't gotten the results back yet. He'll call as soon as he gets the results and has a chance to look them over. He's on the other side of the country attending some specialized Army training. He's an Army Veterinarian, too.

The darkest scab near her leg is where one of the samples was taken from. There are a few stitches there that will be removed after 14 days. The other scabs seem to be healing, but I've gotten excited a few times about stuff looking as if it was going to work, so I'm a little hesitant still.

The New Vet and Ginger's Udder

This is a really long post! It tries to describe what we've been trying to clear up for a year. I've kept pretty good notes, but as I look back, the notes probably could have been better.

We've had this problem with Ginger's udder for a long time. Here's a link to the original post.

We tried all sorts of different treatments trying to get rid of the problem. It got worse slowly over the last year.

What Ginger's udder looked like June 2009

Here's what we did at first:

We tried Fura-zone Ointment for a week... no change.
We tried Blu-Kote spray for a week... no change
We tried Colloidal Siver for a week... no change.
We tried Neosporin for a week... no change.
We even tried 7% Iodine for a week.... no change, except udder became really dry.

Some of the other things we have tried are Tinactin and RashBasher in case it was a fungal infection.

We also used Ivomec twice over the past year. Once because we like to use it as a wormer once a year, the other time was just in case the problem Ginger had happened to be mites.

We also tried Penicillin 5cc 2x for the first day, 4 cc each day for the next 4 days for a total of 5 days.... No change

About 2 months ago we decided to try Hibiclens 2x a day for 3 minutes or more each. Maybe this was some sort of surface bacterial infection or a staph infection.

During the same time we used Hibiclens we also used Silvasorb applied after milking. This seemed to help a little bit. 

This photo taken 6 September 2010 shows the scabs. None of the sores ever oozed puss .

We ran out of Silvasorb and switched to RashBasher just in case it might be a fungal infection. Yes, we were grasping straws at this point. Still reading and searching to see what we could find about rashes on a goat's udder. The rash never spread past the outside of her udder on both sides. It never spread to the inside of her legs, never spread to her stomach or any other place on her body. It never spread to between her teats either, although it did get red and dry between her teats. It never spread to any of the other goats. It never completely fit with any description we read on the internet or in the vetting books we have at home. It never completely fit in with the descriptions or suggestions that we received from questions asked on some of the yahoo groups we are on.

Two weeks ago we read an article from Onion Creek Ranch that indicated to clear up their staph infection they had to pull the scabs off to make the meds more effective. We started scraping scabs off while scrubbing with Hibiclens. We read that Scour Halt (spectinomycin) is effective against gram-positive and gram-negative organisms. This seemed to help slightly. But, what was going on with her udder never fit the description of a staph infection any more than it fit in with any of the other descriptions of other infections.

This photo was taken 5 days after pulling the scabs off while washing with the Hibiclens, after milking we applied Scour Halt topically. More improvement, the most we have seen.

We finally found a vet who regularly treats goats and sheep. His practice is 90% horses, but he knows his goats and sheep, which is unusual around here. When he came out he was glad that we had record of what we had tried as well as a few photos of her udder. He went down the list of infections and diseases that might cause something like this, thinking out loud as he went through them. 

It couldn't be sore mouth, she never had sores on her mouth and it didn't spread through the herd. Also, sore mouth (Orf virus) usually clears up on it's own within two months.

It couldn't be sarcoptes mites because the Ivermectin would have cleared it up (we've used it twice over the past year.) And he said it didn't look like mites, either.

It didn't look anything like a fungal infection.

I can't remember the other things he said it just didn't look like. The list of things he came up with was the same as the list of things we had tried to cure, plus a few.

He said it looked like a mild bacterial infection and a severe allergic reaction to something in her environment. He asked if there was anything we had changed before the problem started like bedding. We hadn't. We have changed things over the past year, but not before this started. Since she has no other lesions anywhere on her body. Right now, because of the localized reaction, we are assuming that this is something to do with the udder wash, bedding, or something else we haven't figured out.

He said that he could run a biopsy and see if it was some sort of allergic reaction. It would be expensive ($185)  and he understands that not everyone wants to spend that much on a goat. With everything we had tried and the records we had kept, he wasn't sure what it was. I said maybe I made it worse with everything I had tried. He said he really didn't think so, as long as this has been going on he thought there wasn't a treatment that I had done that would have made it worse. He would have tried many of the same things.

We told him to go ahead and do the biopsy. We really would like to learn more about whatever it is she is dealing with. The cost of the procedure, the farm call, and the Exenel antibiotic was more than what we paid for the goat. But.... we consider this this as 'tuition'.

What next? After the biopsy comes back we will probably end up putting her on some steroids (if it is an allergic reaction to something) and then try to figure out what she is allergic to. Right now the plan is to change nothing except to give her Exenel shots for the next 3 days for the slight bacterial infection and see if that makes any difference. Since the penicillin hadn't done anything, he wants to try Exenel and keep the rest of her life the same. He also said to discontinue the Scour Halt while we are using the Exenel so that we treating the bacterial infection with only one medication.

He said to not change anything else in her environment, feed, or anything else that we do with her. If her condition changes, he wants to be able to pinpoint where the change came from. If we change from Hibiclens to Chlorhexidine and noticed a change we wouldn't know if it was from the cleanser we were using or from the antibiotic. Hibiclens is 4% Chlorhexidine solution and is dyed pink, Chlorhexidine for animals is 2% and dyed blue. We are following his directions even though I would love to use the much less expensive Chlorhexidine.

The rest of the post shows photos of the biopsy procedure:

Everything the vet needs for the procedure is in his truck. He's thankful we have a place to put it all. 

First he is deciding where to take the samples from. He is going to take three tissue samples and send them to Colorado State University for a pathology test. The results should come back sometime next week, while he is at Advanced Training in Georgia. (He is an Army Veterinarian, too.)

Scrubbing up with Chlorhexidine Scrub. He will take three samples: one from the back of her udder near the oldest and largest sore, one from a spot in this photo, and one from the red area between her teats. He was very careful to choose spots that would be good samples as well as be out of the way of our hands when we milk her. Her milk is currently being given to the chickens, which will continue if she is given steroids. She is being milked twice a day. She freshened in March 2009, and we have been milking her through to see how long we can milk her without breeding.

Giving something to numb the areas he will take the samples from.  The injection is really going into her udder, but she kicked just as I was taking the photo so it looks as if it is going into the back of her leg.

Vet2Be holding the bottle that contains a solution to preserve the tissue samples.

Taking the first plug of tissue from the area with the oldest sore.  The tissue plug seemed to be about 1/4" long and about the same size wide. An interesting tool.... he pushed it in, twisted it around to cut the tissue, then very carefully pulled it out and put the sample in the jar.

The three samples are in the lower part of the jar.

Sewing up the spot where he took one of the samples. We will remove the stitches in three weeks. Not too hard, we've removed stitches from our kids for years instead of taking them back to the doctor. It was always less traumatic for them if Hubby took out their stitches instead of sitting in the doctors office.

The samples are at the Colorado State University lab by now. We milked Ginger last night without interfering with the stitches. We'll wait and see what the lab results are. 

I was impressed with how much the vet knew about diseases of goats, about goats in general, and his 'barnside manner.' 

Ginger is in good hands with this vet! 

Udder Rash

Ginger, Vet2Be's favorite goat, has had a rash on her udder for more than two months. It hasn't gotten worse, and it hasn't gotten better. None of the other goats have it.

We tried Fura-zone Ointment for a week... no change.

We tried Blu-Kote spray for a week... no change (except she had a blue udder for a week!)

We tried Colloidal Siver for a week... still no change.

We tried Neosporin for a week... yup, no change.

We even tried 7% Iodine for a week.... nothing.

Our next course of action will be mastitis vaccinations. She doesn't have any symptoms of mastitis, but the J-Vac is a vaccination information says it is effective against E. coli mastitis, and the Lysigin is said to be effective against Staph aureus. So, maybe Ginger has something on the inside that is manifesting itself on the outside of her udder.

The rash on Ginger's udder. It doesn't affect her milk production. She is still milking between 6 and 7 pounds per milking, but it bothers Vet2Be and me that we can't get rid of it and don't know what it is.

Udder Rash

Ginger, Vet2Be's favorite goat, has had a rash on her udder for more than two months. It hasn't gotten worse, and it hasn't gotten better. None of the other goats have it.

We tried Fura-zone Ointment for a week... no change.

We tried Blu-Kote spray for a week... no change (except she had a blue udder for a week!)

We tried Colloidal Siver for a week... still no change.

We tried Neosporin for a week... yup, no change.

We even tried 7% Iodine for a week.... nothing.

Our next course of action will be mastitis vaccinations. She doesn't have any symptoms of mastitis, but the J-Vac is a vaccination supposed to be effective against E. coli mastitis, and the Lysigin is supposed to be effective against Staph aureus. So, maybe she has something on the inside that is manifesting itself on the outside of her udder.

The rash on Ginger's udder. It doesn't affect her milk production. She is still milking between 6 and 7 pounds per milking, but it bothers Vet2Be and me that we can't get rid of it and don't know what it is.