Hi again and thanks for the great advice on our new little kid. Now I have to ask if anyone has had experience with a doe with a hard lump on the side of her teat. Its about a quarter of an inch across and very hard. It wasn't there yesterday that I could tell and I'm not sure if I should let the kid drink the mild either. Thanks for any help or advise. Nancy

-- Nancy Steele (nsteele@theofficenet.com), June 06, 2000

Answers

Nancy, first I have a 10 year old doe who has a marble sized lump right where her two halves of her udder come together in the front (on the medial right at her foreudder). She has always had this, it never gets bigger it never gets smaller, so first does she have any old scars on her or any other lumps besides this one, if she doesn't than just watch her, get yourself a good new book like Goat Keeping 101 (from caprinesupply.com), join a forum discussion over at EGroups, in the breed of goat that you enjoy, ask questions here and start reading, you really need to be armed with the correct facts about disease, worming and vaccinating before you can even come close to starting your own management that will keep your animals healthy long term...........But a lump on an udder especially if it doesn't move and is attached feeling, and is after freshening (a very stressfull hormonal time) is likely CL. Caseous Lymphadenitis. It is a contagious disease affecting mainly sheep and goats, though in horses it is called chronic abcess. Like CAE is easier explained by relating it with AIDS, CL is explained by relating it to the herpes virus. It lays dormant in the body, actually most animals with CL have abcess on internal organs and lymph nodes, before any abcess surface for us to see, erupting into lumps when stress occurs. Like a gal with herpes can have a break out up inside and not feel it yet can pass it on to partners. The abcess are from small eraser size that can be overlooked to large golf and tenise ball size lumps that will eventually come to a head and burst. This material in the lump is usually cottage cheesy when ripe with onion like layers, this matierial is highly contagious. A doe can also spread this infection to her kids by nursing, it is in the colostrum. Once your barn and fence posts become infected with this material it is years before your place would be considered clean. Goat medicine cultured CL off of wood 6 months after being placed there. You can easly have a vet aspirate the lump with a needle and send the contents into Washington State for a CL test. CL test ran on blood sample only, are negative usually even when a doe has postiive results from an abcess. We have successfully rid our herd of this, actually less than 10 years ago CAE was thought to have been some sort of chronic arthritis that just some families of goats had, and CL was though to be a cancer. We have rasied 10 years worth of heat treated and pasturized does, we also have let out 6 acre wooded pen lay dormant for 2 years, in which we then introduced a boer cross herd, that was later butchered to see if we could find CL. They were clean and I have opened up this pasture again, with no problems so far. Folks who purchase stock are always surprised at the prices I charge for my Nubains, stating that they don't want show stock or papers. But that 35$ goat down the road is very likely CL and CAE positive, and of course you don't find out any of this until you already love this animal. A very expensive 35$! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (Texas Nubains) (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.