Goats with mastitis that dries them up
Thought I'd share my experience with a form of mastitis in my goats that the only symptom is drying up and high SCC. I ran mastitis diagnostics on them, but they came back negative. Each goat that has gotten it in the past couple of years has only had it in one half. The first one we didn't do anything about it and dried her up that fall. I was able to purchase Yellow Jacket that January, which also came with a free sample bottle of Ex-cell 2000 (thank you Synergy for your free samples!). I used the Yellow Jacket as a dry treatment on her. On our other doe that had had it for a few months, I rotated the YJ and the Ex-cell 2000, following the directions that were given. After two treatments, the drying up stopped and her production came back a little. We continued to milk her till the following fall, repeating the treatment when necessary and before drying her up. Both does freshened that spring, the one with the dry treatment still had a lopsided udder, but the one we had treated while still in milk turned out fine. We have since had two other does contract this, one just once, the other several times (she has large orfices, so is more prone to problems). This time we rotated YJ with Cellex Gold, which seems to work even better. We catch it early, and it always clears up with one treatment and production comes back. Sometimes during the treatment it will appear worse and we will actually get blood in the milk. Still don't know exactly what it is, but so glad we know how to take care of it naturally.
Also, note to all goat owners: On cannulas- if you don't want to make your goats mad and difficult every time you do an infusion, get something like blunt tip IV cannulas, 15 guage 1/2 in. They work really well, and the goats won't even know what you're doing.
@rockymtnsater thanks for sharing! I can't say I'm experienced with goats but I've dealt with mastitis quite a bit and I'm sure it's all the same between cows and goats. Take what I say with a grain of salt but I'm thinking my experience could help.
My husband and I had a time when we had a really bad problem with high SCC and it seemed to spread through our barn. We did a lot of testing and a lot of research. To avoid our long drawn out story, I'll get right to the helpful parts. Turns our we had a problem with staph aureus. Staph aureus is very contagious and can spread from cow to cow (or goat to goat) through contact. This could be from touching an infected teat with your hands, wash cloth, milker, and I think even a dip cup if I remember correctly. Most cases of staph A. do not show any symptoms such as clots and things in the milk. They tend to be very high SCC but it can fluctuate. It will seem as though the mastitis has gone away and then it keeps reappearing. Just like you are experiencing, we had quarters that were drying up. I learned that this is because staph A. destroys the milk producing tissue. Thanks to antibiotics staph A. developed a resistance to antibiotics by walling itself off. We had one heck of a time trying to treat it. You're going to love this part... our cultures came back negative. We learned that this is normal with staph A. If you treated your goats before-hand its even more likely to come back negative. What you're seeing seems to be exactly what I saw. Here is what I did...
I was told by my vet and a local university where I get my cultures done that staph A is incurable and the only way to get rid of it is to cull the cow (not true as I will get to). I took their recommendation and any cows that I though were really bad or weren't worth keeping I just sent to the sale. I had some really good milkers that I didn't want to get rid of so I kept those and was very cautious with them. Any quarters that I thought were infected or had high SCC, I milked last. I always moved those cows to the end of the barn and milked their good quarters in the tank and then milked the individual quarters last and out of the tank. I did this to avoid taking a milker off an infected cow and throwing it on a clean cow. I was told that staph A is antibiotic resistant which didn't really matter too much to me because I like to stay away from them any way. I treated them with Yellow Jacket (30cc 3 times). Some quarters cleared up completely, some came back after a few weeks and some didn't clear up at all. The ones that came back or didn't clear up at all I kept treating for a few weeks in a row whether they tested well or not...30cc 3 times, wait a week, retreat. I believe a did that 3-4 times for most quarters. I had 2 quarters that I actually tried one dose of pirsue and one dose of Yellow Jacket. Every quarter that I treated cleared up and never came back. I had probably 8 quarters that I treated. The people at the university do not believe me at all even though they are the ones doing the cultures. They told me that "that stuff doesn't work" and there is no way herbs could cure staph aureus. I never had a problem with staph A since then. Any new cows that I brought in were milked last for a few weeks until I knew they were clean.
During this time our herd SCC was over 900,000 and we were on the verge of getting kicked off the truck. After getting rid of those cows and treating the other ones, our SCC came down to 200,000. 4 months after that we were down to 110,000 and consistently stayed that way for quite some time until we had a hot/wet summer that caused some issues. I certainly hope this isn't your problem but maybe my struggles can be to your benefit. That's our story... Best wishes!
Thanks for your story! I love hearing other peoples experiences and learning from them. I've also been told it was probably staph a., but then others told me no, if it was it would have showed up in the test. I was pretty sure it had to be, but decided not to say definitively. I did forget to mention that although SCC was on the high end, it wasn't terrible. Goats have a higher normal than cows, and we were never over 750,000 on our herd average (probably 3-4 does at the time). Individual test of the problem doe wasn't bad either, but then I tested the specific half, and that's when I got a reading over 1 mil.
Yes, I've heard the same thing about it being incurable and you should cull. Always satisfying when you can prove them wrong and with a natural treatment to boot:-)
I do believe in prevention though, keeping their pens clean and immune systems healthy by good nutrition. It's just harder, I think, with goats on a small property, plus sometimes things just come up and we aren't able to get everything done that we would like.
Anyway, sounds like you've got a good system going and I hope everything continues to go well for you. Thanks again for sharing!
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