Goodbye Ginger and Janice

We had the vet come out to put down two goats yesterday.

The first was Ginger. She was Vet2Be's first goat. He bought her when he was 10 with money that he had saved. She was an Alpine x Saanen cross and was one of those goats that you just love. She was sweet and friendly and even a 2 year old could lead her by the collar. A 'wonder goat' if there ever was one.

And besides being so sweet, she gave alot of milk. We milked her through for 3 years. She gave at least 1/2 gallon a day when we were milking her once a day through the winter. Milking twice a day she usually gave more than a gallon.

About 3 years ago she had an allergic reaction on her udder to something. It never went away. Not only did it never go away, some of the sores continued to grow. Then the sores turned necrotic. The vet came out about 2 months ago and surgically removed the necrotic tissue. She was planning on coming back within 6 weeks to remove the rest of the tissue and try some reconstructive surgery. We would never have bred her again, but she was such a sweet goat that we wanted to give her this chance.

But it didn't work. Within a month the mass on her udder was bigger than what the vet removed, and another sore was growing quickly om the other side of her udder.

We did all we could do for 3 years, and it was time to let her go.

Janice was a Saanen. A sweet goat, but not great back feet. We nick-named her "Grandma Goat" because she didn't mind taking care of any of the other kids. She would let kids snack whether they were hers or not.

This spring she had two beautiful kids. But something happened to her hips during delivery and her hips were all 'wonky'. That's the best way to describe it.

She managed okay during the summer, but had a hard time getting up and down. She limped alot. She would sit out in the pasture to graze instead of wandering and grazing. She couldn't get up on her back legs to head butt anyone, either. It's sad when goats can't play.

We haven't had an especially cold winter, but it was still taking it's toll on her. She got very thin. It was time to let her go, too.

I don't have any photos today. They all ended up on a storage/back up hard drive. I'll have to dig it out of the box and post photos later.

Although the day was very sad, both Vet2Be and I cried alot, we were glad that the two people who loved them best were with them when they crossed the 'rainbow bridge'.

We'll miss those two.

They were very special to us.

Sam, the Dog

Sam is a great dog. He's the kind of dog that every kid should have.

Big, fluffy, clean, and happy to let little (or big) kids snuggle next to him.

He's even great with the bummer lambs we sometimes have indoors in the spring.

That's why we took him to the vet to have his cancer removed.

In February we brought him into the vet to have some bumps checked out. The vet took some samples (with Vet2Be helping) and checked them under the microscope. They were fatty tumors and weren't a problem. Lots of dogs get them.

About 6 weeks ago one started growing fairly fast. It doubled in size in about 6 weeks so we brought him into the vet again. The vet drained the fluid out, just to see what was in there and to see how much fluid there was (alot!) Then he suggested that we have the tumor removed because of it's size and how fast it grew.

Vet2Be was in the surgery and not only got to watch, he got to take photos and videos.

When the vet started the surgery, he could tell that the tumor was probably malignant. The tests came back on Friday and the vet was right, it was malignant. Good thing we brought Sam in!

This is what the poor dog looks like this week!

We're spraying his surgical site with silver to help it heal. The vet saw him on Friday and was pleased with the progress.

We take him back again next Friday to have the stents removed, but the staples stay in for another week after that.

We're really hopeful this took care of the cancer.

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.

Sam's Paw and Foxtail

We have been overrun with foxtail this year.

We hate foxtail!

It gets stuck in everything.

Thankfully we haven't had any goats get foxtail stuck in their throats, they generally don't eat it.

In the past we've pulled it out from between Sam's teeth. (Sam's a fluffy large mutt dog who is gentle and kind unless you are trying to get into the house and you don't belong here!)

Sam's been licking his paw raw. We couldn't see anything in there. Sometimes he gets nervous and licks his fur off his paws. So we put a 'cone of shame' on him. That usually does the trick.

This time it didn't heal.

I decided to soak his foot in epsom salts to see if we could sooth his foot as well as pull out any infection. We were able to get some of the infection out. But his paw was still hot and shiny.... a sure sign that something is still wrong inside.

Vet2Be decided to soak his paw again today, and see what happened. He was able to see the very end of a piece of foxtail. You can see it in the picture above, it looks like a little "V".

What a good dog! He'll let us soak his foot, poke it and squeeze it (gently) to see if we can get anything (or any pus) out. He just sits there!

If we couldn't make some progress on his paw today, we were taking him to the vet tomorrow. Vet2Be has seen many dogs who have paws that look like this. The diagnoses is almost always a piece of foxtail that has worked it's way into the paw.
 
Vet2Be soaked Sam's paw again later. We'll do it twice a day for the next few days until it looks nice and pink instead of shiny and red. We've also been spraying it with a disinfectant, and then with Vetericyn. If you haven't tried Vetericyn on wounds for animals before, you might want some in your animal first aid kit. It's wonderful stuff! Kills 99.9% of lots of different types of infection from staph to MRSA. Click here to see what else it kills.

Since the 'cone of shame' is so awkward and hard to eat and drink through, I found a pattern for a dog bootie on the internet. This stays on much better than a sock or any other bandage we tried (which is why we went back to the 'cone of shame')

The dog bootie stays on well and it doesn't seem to bother Sam much at all. You can find the pattern (easy!) at Tammy's Craft Emporium. She has a great tutorial! She makes them for her Springer Spaniel who needs boots when she's running around in the snow.

We've also been dealing with some udder infections on the goats. One has staph, so she's in a tee-shirt to cover her udder. The other one still has the tee-shirt on to keep whatever is causing her allergic reaction off her udder.

It's been a long few weeks!

I'll have some photos of the udder in a few days. We've been soaking both goat's udders in epsom salts, too. It's helped alot!

Thank goodness they're Saanens!

Gentle and easy to work with, even when they are under stress.

Bunny Progress... Good News!

Two photos of the bunny recently. Vet2Be has been diligent about applying the silver nano particles that Hubby has been making and doing research on. Darcy gets it squirted on once a day.

This was taken April 3, 2011.

This was taken April 7, 2011. The 'bunny hospital' is the downstairs bathroom shower.

Here are two earlier photos so you can see the progress.

March 20, 2011. We found the abscess and Vet2Be cleaned it out. We knew the skin above the abscess was dead (it was hard), but knew we weren't equipped to perform that type of surgery. So we cleaned out the infection and waited for Mother Nature.

March 28, 2011. The dead skin from the abscess came off one side. Vet2Be took the entire dead part off.

The first two posts about the bunny can be found here (Not For Weak Stomachs!) and here (Bunny Update).

Home Remedies for Stopping Bleeding

Sheepy called me and wanted to know if there were any household remedies for stopping bleeding. I remembered that you could use cornstarch or spider webs (which are rich in vitamin K), but I didn't know of any others. She is planning on taking off a bit of her buck's scur and wants to make sure that if there is more bleeding than she is comfortable with, she has something she can try.

I'm not recommending any of the ideas below.... I haven't tried any of them except the blood stop powder that I bought at the farm supply store. But I wanted the information handy just in case I want to try something else. And that's why I put things like this on my blog.... just so I know where I can find them. It's kinda like an electronic brain for me!

I did a quick internet search and found a few things that would stop minor bleeding. I think that pressure, bandages, and a trip to the emergency room (or veterinarian) would be best for a bad wound. But sometimes if it isn't a bad wound, then it is nice to try something at home.

Here's the link I found the most helpful information:

Bleeding Home Remedy

Some things on the list that I didn't know about, but make perfect sense, were wet tea bags (not herbal--just regular tea), yarrow, duct tape, salt mixed with water, dry coffee grounds, and cayenne pepper.

Hoosier Home Remedies by Varro E. Tyler recommends scrapings of sole leather applied to a cut and the juice from a milkweed plant that is dripped into the cut or wound. Also, chewing up sassafras leaves (sassafras albidum) until they are fine and then applying the mass to the would should stop bleeding.

Tea leaves and leather scrappings both contain tannins and will act as styptics.

We'll stick with the blood-stop powder stored out in the barn, but I love knowing other ways of doing things!

Bunny Update

Here's a link to the first post about Darcy, the bunny with the abscess.

Vet2Be spends every other day in a traditional High School, the other school days he is home or volunteering at the local veterinarians. On Monday I picked him up early because Darcy needed some medical attention, and I wasn't going to be the one to do it.

This is what I saw when I went to do chores in the morning. The dead part of the skin had started to come off the top of his head.

This part needs to be removed. We didn't want to cut this part off while it was still attached on the other side. We knew it was dead because it was hard, but since we haven't done this type of surgery, we thought we would wait a few days to see what happened. The yellowish stuff on the skin flap is the infection that has dried and crystallized.

Everything all ready. Scissors sitting in alcohol, plenty of cotton swabs ready to clean any infection and prep the area, chlorhexadine (the blue liquid) in the cup.

After cleaning all the infection off the skin (using the tweezers and chlorhexadine) Vet2Be was able to cut through the dead skin with some very sharp sewing scissors. The scissors weren't sharp enough to cut through the dead skin and the crystalized infection together. No, the bunny didn't jump or squirm. He didn't feel anything, he's a very calm bunny.

You can see the bits of crystallized infection on the towel. This is Darcy's head after the dead part was cut away.

We sprayed the infected area with silver nano particles because Vet2Be wasn't thrilled about the idea of administering penicillin to his bunny for the next 6 weeks. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a shot of penicillin every day for six weeks, either!

One of the businesses that Hubby is involved in starting produces specialized silver and gold nano particles, completely different that the colloidal silver you can buy in the store. This is much more effective at killing infections than anything else that is on the market.

I can't describe how they do it yet because the process is being patented. Suffice it to say that there are four Ph.D. scientists involved and all are highly trained in different fields. They have come together on this project and it is amazing what they are finding out with their experiments!

Curious about the silver nano particles? This is Darcy's head about 10 hours after the the picture above. Dramatic improvement in a short time.

10 hours later the wound had begun to shrink, the swelling was down, Darcy was moving around normally and not hiding in a corner. He was eating and drinking normally, too.

We'll continue to apply the nano silver for the next few weeks. We'll post as Darcy improves. We are hoping that his skin will grow back over the top of his head and that he will be back to normal in about 6-8 weeks.

If this treatment works, we have some friends that raise meat rabbits who will be very, very happy! No more antibiotics for abscesses!

NOT For Weak Stomachs!

The photos are at the end of this post, if you have a weak stomach, please don't read the rest of the post! The reason I am posting this is to provide information about abscesses to other hobby farmers who might have either rabbits or bunnies. I'm not posting to gross anyone out. My blog is also my 'Farm Journal', to remind us of what we did when, what obstacles we were able to over come, and what we were able to learn.

I debated even posting this, but my 10 year old niece thought it was interesting and she learned alot from it. So, I decided it was okay to post.

Vet2Be's 4-H leader told him a long time ago that if you have livestock, sooner or later you will have dead-stock. We've been pretty lucky and not lost too many animals. Probably because we've been diligent about learning what we can about them.

The photos that follow are of Vet2Be's bunny, Darcy. In the winter the bunny's cages are protected with wood on all sides so that they can stay warm. We also don't take them out very often in the winter. They seem to like to bed down in the winter and be left alone.

The weather has been warming up a bit and we took the boards down. We didn't notice over the past few weeks that Darcy had only been sitting with his left side (and good eye) towards the front of the cage. We found Darcy with a huge abscess! Abscesses in bunnies are soooo hard to get rid of! We know, we've tried before.

This one had just ruptured, and it was quite large. It took Vet2Be about 90 minutes to clean out the wound.

I would never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to handle something like this 6 or 7 years ago. We've learned so much about animals and how to take care of them. We've also learned it is our responsibility to do the best we can and learn as much as we can to take care of the 4-legged friends in our care.

The following pictures are very graphic--if you have a weak stomach and don't like the look of infections, then stop reading right here and come visit us another time. I promise to always warn you if I think things might be too graphic.

Just so you understand our choice of words..... bunnies are pets. Rabbits aren't pets. That's how we, as hobby farmers, tell the difference between the two words. We have bunnies that were orphaned when their previous owners couldn't take care of them anymore, we have never raised rabbits.

Here are two links to information about abscesses in rabbits that have no photos.

Ontario Rabbit Education Organization

Use of Penicillin to Treat Abscesses in Rabbits

Here come the photos.....

Bunnies don't have the same enzymes that we do, so their infections can't drain the same way ours can. It is about the consistency of toothpaste--really. Vet2Be took out quite a bit.

This was a large abscess.... especially for a tiny bunny. How did it get so big? The bunny sat in the cage and only looked out of his left eye. Since it is winter, we never saw the other side of his head until we removed some of the boards that were protecting the cage during the winter. We never noticed that he always looked at us with his left eye.

This is about 1/2 way cleaned out. Vet2Be used Chlorhexidine 2% solution on the Q-tips. That's what they use at the vet's office to prep for surgery as well as clean out wounds. The wound itself is about 1/2 the length of a Q-tip. Chlorhexidine is the same antimicrobial found in Hibiclens.

Darcy (the bunny) put his head inside the towel about 2/3's of the way through the procedure. He needed a break. He was a really, really good bunny! He sat very still for almost all of the procedure.

After the wound was cleaned out, Vet2Be put neosporin inside. We've been keeping an eye on it and will continue to clean it out daily.

Nope, this didn't gross Vet2Be out at all. He's watched so many surgeries at the vet's office, and watched them treat so many wounds that were worse than this, that he just did his job and it didn't bother him at all. In fact, he looked up at the clock about 50 minutes after we started and it surprised him that so much time had passed! He said that now he understands how a vet can do a surgery that is long and repetitive without going crazy. The techs get tired because they aren't doing as much .

By Thursday morning Darcy was hopping around his cage like he does every spring. He acted as if there was nothing wrong with him and hadn't been through such an ordeal on Sunday. It was great to see him standing on his hind legs and begging for a treat! Bananas and carrots for the sick bunny! Yay!

It was interesting to read about penicillin being used to treat these infections. Vet2Be will check with the vet he volunteers for to see if it would be okay for us to try penicillin on Darcy. When we took care of an abscess on a bunny a few years ago we never ran across anything that said we could use penicillin on them. I'm glad that people are continually able to find better ways to help animals heal.

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!

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!