I have lost 2 goats in the past 3 years, a purebred Nubian buck and a crossbred Nubian doe, to a 'wasting' type disease that we cannot seem to identify. Both were under 5 years of age, living in a herd of about 40 goats. They begin losing weight although they continue to eat and had normal manure. They were tested for Johnes and internal parasites, wormed and treated for coccidia. Upon necropsy they had no internal body fat, no abnormalities or growths. My DVMs best guess was some type of enteritis that didn't allow there bodies to absorb fat or protein. I have a friend with a larger commercial herd that has had the same thing happen in her herd, of course she writes off the occasional loss and won't put any money into diagnosis. Has anyone esle had similar trouble? any suggestions?

-- Dianne Von Bergen (yankeeterrier@hotmail.com), September 01, 1999

Answers

Since your vet did the autopsy, I would hazard a guess that the goats were checked for CAE and tapeworms. From our experience, it is fairly obvious that Corrid is your culprit.

We experienced a disastrous pharmaceutical poisoning some years ago, and lost our entire herd. We gave the herd Corrid for coccidiosis, and they began dieing. We countered by giving oxytetracycline. We lost more. Since we were securely entrapped in the medical system, we gave them another round of Corrid, per instructions. More died, and we gave them more oxytetracycline, and more died. Do you sense a pattern here?

We didn't see it until we took time out from all the medications and ministrations and buryings and crying for our babies dying screaming in our arms in the wee hours of the morning, and began entering the results in the computer. Of course, by that time, our chores had lessened appreciably, as we were running out of goats.

In desperation, we took a nice young buck in for a $40 autopsy just before death. When we called for the results, we were informed that the buck had died. Why? "Don't know."

We began studying. I don't know about the Corrid, but tetracyclines are known to block the gall bladder and destroy livers. A goat can not live without a gall blader. Some humans can get by fairly well. Reference the Physician's Desk Reference. (It's a really big business in the U.S.)

We converted to herbal therapy and managed to keep enough of the herd alive long enough to begin a restart (none are still alive). We also began doing our own autopsies. We have seen new liver growth, but we never beaten the blocked gall bladder. We have seen gall bladders the size of oranges and seen goats that just poured fluid from both ends when they died, though they were nothing but skin and bones when they died.

I just put down a tiny runted doe that was wasting. I found that the walls of one of the stomachs was entirely coated with impacted feed, up to an inch thick. Incoming feed was passing through with no action. Obviously, the animal had bloated, but the center of the mass of food had opened sufficiently to pass new incoming food.

Mackinzie's book on goats recommends fasting animals. This may well work, if done early in the problem, but one would have to have a pen specially prepared, with no vegetation available. I am presently adding organic apple cider vinegar to the goats drinking water in the hopes that it will aleviate this sort of problem.

We still have one little buck that exhibits the same symptoms. He seemed to be doing a bit better, but I fouled up and fed him seperately the other evening. He enjoyed it, but is going downhill since then.

Certain grazes and weather situations can create or aggravate the problem. Wet graze, scrub oak and Buckhorn can impact in the stomach.

However, in reflection, we realized the we had a good many similar cases over the years and had to look for something that could be a root cause. The one constant that came to mind was our practice of cutting the kidds off milk at 6-8 weeks, as recommended. We have had no such problems since we have quit cutting the kids off at 6-8 weeks.

We have fed our last two sets out to around 4-5 months (whenever they bit the ends out of new nipples) and they are doing fine, though they still think that they really should have some more milk. I suspect that cutting them off too early sets up a lifelong tendancy towards gluttony. Goats don't need any help in that direction. ;)

BTW, we no longer have any use for vets, doctors or pharmaceuticals. To each, their own. Kerry

-- Kerry Wooster (kerryw@hctc.net), September 02, 1999.

Sounds like CAE that we are so strongly cautioned against. Our CAE tests are done w/ the Johnes disease test.

-- Bob Ambrozaitis (rambrozaitis@snet.net), October 04, 1999.

You know,that does sound an awful lot like Johnes disease to me. The test for that is not always 100% accurate.See the Jan/Feb 1999 issue of the Dairy Goat Journal for more info.

-- Rebekah Leaf (daniel1@transport.com), November 14, 1999.

The other thing is that just because you treat for coccidiosis doesn't mean the problem is fixed.Coccidiosis causes the wall of the stomach to be inflamed and can cause permament damage to the stomach so that the animal cannot properly digest most of it's food.We had a really bad bout of it a few years ago and treated it with corrid.Some of the animals were already very thin and couldn't be saved even after treatment.Of the affected animals that lived,three of them are still unthrifty and thin ,no matter how much they eat .Kids that have been weaned recently do seem to be especially prone to dying from this. The cause of the coccidiosis? In our case,we werre watering our goats from the nearby pond where the ducks swam.Once we changed water sources the coccidiosis was no longer a problem.

-- Rebekah Leaf (daniel1@transport.com), November 14, 1999.

Dianne and Others,

This sounds alot like a condition know to us as Over Eating Disease. The condition is created by a sudden change in feed. To which the goats stomach (Microbs) can not adjust. My understanding is that this is also known as pulpy kidney disease due to the condition of the kidney upon autopsy. Goats will gradually decline in condition with not aparent external clues.

-- Tim Ritter (cbrooke@frontiernet.net), January 15, 2000.

Dianne, I wouldn't be surprized that the necropsy would not have involved a CAE test. Also Johnne's test are not accurate, I can send you an article from United Caprine News if you like. The biggest problems we see in our Dairy Goats, mostly Nubians and some LaMancha's (13 years worth) is Coccidiosis and worms. Corid is not the evil anit-christ. Corid is a valuable drug used in the hands of someone with the understanding of how it works. It blocks the bodies use of thiamin, which the cocci uses to change from one form into another, no thiamin it dies. If overdosed or used for too long of a time you can kill your animal. Used correctly and especially in a prevention program, it is a valuable tool. Secondly there are a great number of feeds on the market today, because of the Boer goat, that are not suitable for goats. Goats are 4 stomached animals and the overuse of animal fat in their feed, fish and feather meal are the biggest culprits, can cause rumen compaction and can mimic other problems when in fact the animal is dieing from rumen acidosis. Most goat feeds are just glorified hog feed. We do not use any animal products at Lonesome Doe, when we see the girls out in the woods chasing down animals to eat, I may rethink our feed. It is always horrible to loose and animal, it is worsened by not having an answer. A vet is a valuable tool in health management, used correctly it will save you money. Only a vet will know if this is a prevelant problem in your area, also don't wait for an animal to be at deaths door before you have the animal or the herd seen. My vet charges me 35$ to come to the farm, if she is able to pick up on a problem that I am overlooking that is the cheapest 35$ I will spend this year. If I can be of any help please e-mail me. vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 21, 2000.

Dianne, i agree with the other folks, it sounds like Johnnes Disease, but the not absorbing the food could be coccidiosis. Corid is not usually the cause of death in animals tho you can get bad reactions from any medication. I have use Corid without any adverse effects but I only use it once or twice a year. And a lot of vets around here know little to nothing about goats, and are not interested in learning either. Please do not get discouraged it is hard to loose animals esp. when no one can tell you why. Where did you get your goats? an auction is not a good place to buy them unless you can keep them in a separate pen for a month or so. You can bring home a lot of problems from an auction or a goat show. Overcrowding, overfeeding, bad weaher, bad hay, bad feed, there are so many things that can injure a goat. United Caprine News is a great help. Langston Univeristy, Langston, Oklahoma does lots of research on goats, and are very helpful. Hope some of this will help Karen

-- KAREN MAUK (DAIRYGOATMAMA@AOL.COM), February 04, 2000.

I hope I'm wrong Dianne, but when you mentioned "wasting disease" and aniamls dieing at a young age my thought jumped to Scrapie. Seen in sheep more commonly than goats I have heard of goats getting it also. It is primarily a neurological disease. The only way to diagnose it is to remove the head of the dead animal and send it to the State vet. Your local vet should know about the disease and the other procedures. Ask him if this might be a possibility. Like I said I pray I'm wrong, because there is no cure for the disease and if you have it, your entire herd would be confiscated and distroyed. That's the only way to stop it from contaminating other herds. Best of luck. And don't stop trying to determine the cause. In the end it is worth the mo

-- jennifer (schwabauer@aol.com), February 06, 2000.