Victoria from Tonasket WA. My doe had 4 babies 2 days ago.Her bag is huge and hard. Some milk is comming but not enough. Been milking and massaging. She is very pampered and well taken care of. What more can I do for her hard bag? And what causes this? Don't think it is mastitis yet.

-- Victoria Hannah (victoriahannah @ hotmail.com), April 04, 2002

Answers

Let us pray it is not a hard bag! I am speaking from owning sheep not goats but...last year I had a ewe that always raised great babies have a hard bag which was not mastitis, couldn't get hardly any milk out of her and she gave me triplets. Guess what bottle fed them all but they had problems because I didn't realize they didn't get any colustrum from their mom. Steal some colustrum from another if you can. I would go to the forum called 9ll goat and see if you can find Vicky also I believe there is a diana on this forum, hopefully one of them will see your message. I would also call a vet. If it was just a day since delivery you might have given her a drug to let down the milk but two days would worry me. Good Luck Debbie

-- debbie (bwolcott@cwis.net), April 04, 2002.

Victoria, massage her bag with Vicks or simular,iused Ukers salve its not as strong as vicks and warm washcloth,to break it up.It will help.and give her vitamin C, oranges cut into bite size pieces.Keep us posted Pam

-- pam (pams65@hotmail.com), April 04, 2002.

Debbie is correct, hardbag in goats is almost always caused by CAE a virus which she will now have passed onto her kids. You could call the vet and see if he will give you some oxytocin to help with the milk let down, hoping that with quads she just came into such a flush of milk that she has edema. It won't turn into mastitis unless a bacteria gets into the udder. I would have a blood test ran on the doe for CAE, saanendoah.com has a great article with all the information you need for testing under serious goat stuff. The vitamin C is also a good idea. After massaging make sure and clean her udder really well, udder balms and greasy salves made for massaging left on the udder is the perfect medium for staph to grow. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (Nubians) (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), April 05, 2002.

TAG-ON QUESTION: I had a doe with twins, with a hard bag, too. I did not know it could be realted to CAE. I treated with antibiotics (mastitis prevention), and oxytocin per vets recommendation. If she is milking fine now, do I still need to check for CAE? She was a first-time mom, and still has a very full bag. She gives more milk than the 3 yr olds I have. I only milk for family use at this time, so not top stock-line, but from a good clean farm with no disease. Milk is also bottle-fed to other babies. Do I need to have all babies checked, if she is positive? She nurses her own, with milk to spare.

-- Janelle Menzel (menzel@netins.net), April 06, 2002.

Hi Jannell, when CAE was first diagnosed, or at least we first started talking about it late 80's, it was only an arthritic disease of goats, though they could be yearlings when first getting the classic swollen knees. It is really rather recently that the hard udder has been noticed in goats who are also CAE positive, and it is sometimes the first inkling that their is even a problem. The only CAE positive hard udder I have ever seen was at a friends of mine, and I mean no colostrum, and the udder was like a brick. Since we intially treated the doe for mastitis, and also edema with oxytocin, masssage etc. she never let down milk. We worked on her for the week when the blood test came back that she was positive. It is up to you if you test your goats or not, it is just so inexpensive, and I have to know for sales. Sounds like you have a really good milker on your hands, if she is one who udders to heavily before she kids, you may want to save colostrum from another doe and start milking her before she kids so she doesn't get so much edema in her udder. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (Nubians) (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), April 07, 2002.

if it's hard, not rock hard, i'd suspect edema and just massage it-i have one every year that comes in like this-i just massage with warm water and it goes away in about a week and milk production comes back up. good luck. let us know.

-- laura (okgoatgal@hotmail.com), April 08, 2002.