I wrote in a while ago about my goat that was drying up. She is doing much better now. The problem I am having is: I bought a couple a pygmys and one of them had runny eyes. Two weeks latter I bought a yearling Alpine and a couple weeks after that I bought the Nubien. The pygmy's runny eye turned into a runny nose also and then a cough, this spread to all the goats. I gave them mega dose of Penicillin. That helped a little but did not cure. The vet gave me a dose of Nuflour and that did not help. Then he wormed them for lung worms and gave me some sulfer for four days. This helped but never cured completly. Now the runny nose is coming back, the cough never left altogether. They are not running a fever and their stools are fine. They are getting good alfalfa and grain and water. They have shelter from the weather but lots of ventalation. I don't close it up and they can be outside any time. We try to take them for walks every day. I am at my witts end. It is almost time to breed and I don't know what to do.

Jo

-- Jo Nelson (p-jnelson@orofino-id.com), August 25, 2001

Answers

With all the new animals all bought and now brought in together you are just going to have this type of thing happening. I do not treat cough or runny nose without a fever, or wheezing, or the nose snot turning green and snotty :) The sulfa drug is a good idea, but since it is given for 5 days doubt that it did much giving it for only 4. I would redo a sulfa on your own, either with what you have left over or some Albon, Dimethox or Sulfaquinoxiline 20%, either ordered from pipestone.com jefferslivestock.com or your large tractor supply or feed store (give me an email on which you found and I will give you the dosages) I would also re-worm, since he was in error with the sulfa he probably also gave you the wrong goat dosages also. What wormers can you get locally, course its cheaper to order them from the above catalogs anyway.

I would also get some Tylan 200, Tetracylcine (either oxy-tet or Biomycin) and your vaccinations (Bar Vac CD&T) to have on hand. Both Tylan and tetracylcines are used for pnemonia, which is really shipping fever in your case. The weeping eyes and nose is the classic symptoms of it, and in really horrid cases pasturella pnemonia can have goats with snot hanging down so low it connects to the ground. When bringing in broker herds in bad shape this time of the year with snotty noses, we put them on peoples Benedryl (Wallmart brand dyphenhydramine) liquid, this will break up the congestion and help them breath. We don't want to futher cause them rumen upset by putting them on anitibiotics unless we have to. Make sure you are using Probios (a horse paste chocked full of naturally occuring bacteria that repopulates the rumen) after worming and during and after any antibiotics. There are very few uses left to use penicillin on, prevention of wound infections and some incidence of mastitis. saanendaoh.com is a great site to bookmark, when you have access to a printer, print the serious goat stuff section down and also the goat meds. Always refer to the dosages and routes of giving these injections before giving them. You would have saved your does the shots and yourself the costs of the penicillin. You may also want to check out the information on ID-1 over on goatworld.com and improve your goats immune systems. Until the goats calm down and give each other everything they have brought onto the place, you are going to be plagued with all sorts of little annoyances. Keep them wormed well, every 21 days for the next several months. Once you have them all together for awhile the problems will dissappear. From that point forward don't bring in new stock without quaranteen or you will be right back to this point again! Good luck! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), August 25, 2001.

Thanks for the feed back. Don't know if this matters but I have had the goats since June. This has been going on for quite some time now.

Jo

-- Jo Nelson (p-jnelson@orofino-id.com), August 25, 2001.

Jo, dont know if they have the same thing my goats do but after fair last year mine had a hourse cough and the vet said it was a virus they picked up and it would go away with out meds in a couple of weeks and it finally did.I dont know if they become imune afterwards but they didnt get it this year.

-- kathy h (ckhart55@earthlink.net), September 01, 2001.