I have a young buck that has alot of little bumps on the underside of his ear flaps. They are kind of yellow but not soft like a pimple. Does anyone have any idea what this might be and what I should do about it? I just gave him ivermec injectable orally. Don't know if this will help.(Gave it to him for worms).

-- Phyllis Frazier (pfrazier0@yahoo.com), February 04, 2002

Answers

This is just a virus, goes away in time, some places it is called ORF, other places it is called contagious icthma, it is a form of soremouth that doesn't get on the mouth. We used to call it sandpaper ears, and its odd that LaMancha's only get it under their tail :) It never bothers them, but you can make it much worse and get secondary infections with it by putting iodine or ointments on it. Ointments like udder butter etc. can trap staph between the oils and skin, the perfect invironment for staph to flourish. So just keep him clean, perhaps with wet ones and let it run its course. And like soremouth he will never have this again, though it may go through the whole group, does who have had it rarely have kids who have it, so it must be immunity passed in good colostrum. We had the body form in a show doe and buck, horid raised skin whelps that stripped the hair off, but they to healed and are fine. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

Watch this very closely. We had a Nubian wether kid last year develop a staph infection on the inside surface of one of his ears. It started out just like you are describing, with little bumps all over the inside surface of his ear. It was nasty and took awhile with antibiotics to clear it up. It made him look real funny too, because the infected ear was about an inch longer than the healthy ear until the infection completely cleared up. Don't expect a staph infection to clear up on its own.

-- Skip in Western WA (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), February 05, 2002.