# Skinny Goat



## babsbag (Sep 9, 2017)

I have a goat that will not gain weight no matter what I do. She is clear of CL, CAE, Johne's. FAMACHA is good. She eats like a horse. All the alfalfa she wants plus grain, calf manna, alfalfa pellets, beet pulp, and BOSS.   I am not milking her but she is still letting her doeling nurse. She doesn't make much milk at all but kid is ok and could be weaned. I let the doe free feed all night long with no competition, and many days too. She is a walking bag of bones and not sure what to try next.  Going to take fecal to vet next week just in case but have never had a parasite problem at my place. She was dosed with Cylence for mites and lice just because I could and wormed with Valbazen for tapes as I saw them in another doe.  Her coat is shiny and healthy, better looking than some of my fat goats. 

Any ideas?


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## Southern by choice (Sep 9, 2017)

I know you said you put the cobalt block out already.  Is she anemic?
After the fecal I would look at giving the red cell for horses to her.
You kinda have to be aggressive with it.

Remember what I told you we went through with Ruby? (I will do a post about it eventually)
She gained back 28 lbs in 1 month!


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## Eteda (Sep 9, 2017)

_Im guessing tape worms still. 
           I would try praziquantel and redose again in 21 days. Tape worms can be hard to see in a fecal count and are often overlooked as they sink instead of float. they look triangular in shape. ask your vet to look for tapeworms specifically.
           Even in dogs. fenbendazole ( panacur or safeguard) only kills one kind of tapeworm. not both kinds and I do not think it kills the head which grows back a new segmented body. Praziquantel on the other hand kills both of them and the horse tapeworm and the head of the worms preventing their regeneration. however it cannot kill the eggs so you need to retreat on the life cycle of the tapeworm. twice for sure and thrice is better. 
          tapeworms actually absorb the food through their "skin" if you will, taking away the nourishment the animal is trying to absorb. Most of the time a huge appetite and weight loss are the only signs. They do not suck blood, they will not be anemic because of them. 
           Is she still loosing weight or just not gaining. Maybe she needs more fat in her diet and not more protein. Protein produces meat and milk. Fat produces weight. 
corn oil and rice bran are two feed additives that people use to add fat to horses diets. their are others by a premix may add to much copper to the diet. goats 40 ppm,........ horses 2000 or more ppm..... however I like the calf manna best and it is my favorite choice. I use it often. 
               If that is not the cause it may be liver problems. I have heard that is one of the signs, but luckily haven't experienced it. I would ask the vet of that also and see what experience says. I would like to know what your vet thinks and what you figure out so I can learn also. However remembering is the biggest problem,LOL._


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## babsbag (Sep 10, 2017)

I bought her some rice bran and she won't touch it, the only thing that she won't eat; that is why I was giving BOSS and also beet pulp for a while.  She loves the Calf Manna and Goat Balancer. She was also getting a horse supplement called Fat Cat. I don't think that she is getting any skinnier but certainly not gaining weight. 

She had an ear infection last winter and was pretty sick for a while. I had just bred her when she got sick and she never really gained weight while pregnant or after freshening. The infection was caused by Trueperella Pyogenes which is an opportunistic bacteria that is usually seen when another bacteria is present. It is an abscess causing bacteria and it resides in the mucous membrane of most animals and just waits for the immune system to get busy fighting something else and then it will make its presence known. It can cause abscesses that you can see and ones that you can't, such as in lungs or udder. My suspicion is that she had Pasteurella pneumonia and Trueperella Pyogenes took hold at the same time. 

She has access to minerals and the herd just finished off a cobalt block, it took them about 3 weeks to go through a 50 lb block. She does not look copper deficient but I suppose that could be playing a part too. She is dark brown and her coat looks really good. I do multi-min injections on my goats, or at least I did...it causes abscesses on  a pretty regular basis so I am switching to loose copper and selenium minerals in addition to their regular mineral.

I have had skinny goats in milk, but never like her. I will get the fecal in on Mon or Tues. and go from there. The few goats that have seen tapeworm segments on came from another herd in OR. Tapeworm require a pasture mite to be a host and then the goat eats the mite when it grazes. Since I have basically zero grass tapeworm is not a real common thing to see in my goats. I treated the ones in my herd that looked scruffy but only saw tape on two of them.  I guess I need to collect the stuff to do my own fecals.


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## Eteda (Sep 11, 2017)

Babsbag it is good that her coat looks good. I would say she wouldn't be copper deficient. especially if she is shiny, glossy or smooth. a healthy coat is a healthy goat. sounds like she just hasn't caught up. if she is young and still growing that will take extra feed and time. Just like you mentioned that she wasn't caught up when she kidded the last time. I've had an occasional animal not catch up to growing and lambing and not fill out until she was 5. it is unusual but it dose happen. they usually turn out to be the largest of my herd. And then their is joy. Joy was a triplet, born to my largest ewe. She is the smallest in my herd. The size of a 4 month old lamb. i bottle raised her and no she didn't get enough milk the first three weeks. then she developed an eye infection in which rendered her sightless for a while. JoJo wore a bell so Joy could hear where she was at. they were both orphans and raised together. I think jojo was the cause of joys eye infection. I think she hoarded the nipples on the milk bucket and joy having to fight for it damaged her eyes. I took her a year and a half to get her sight back fully. My vet said it would take time even after the antibiotic eye ointment cleared up the infection. She stayed so small I didn't breed her until she was 2 years old so she lamed at 2 1/2 year old. Joy is in the middle, she is 2 years old in this picture and the lambs are 4 months old. I have had two other lambs that had the weepy greying eye infection also and they weren't orphans. so Im not sure what is causing it.  I had it happen to a lamb each year for three years. out of 40 lambs or so that's not to bad i guess.


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## babsbag (Sep 11, 2017)

She isn't a young goat, about 3. She is very tall, last year when I got her she was in milk and refused to dry up, she milks like a dream.  Her bone structure tells me that she should be a big goat, but she is a walking bag of bones.  Hopefully I can get the fecal into the vet this week.  (I am on a crunch time line for an event this weekend so it is going to be a busy week.)

This goat was given to me by a friend as she didn't meet her breeding standards for her herd but she milked well and would do good in my dairy and she is a sweet goat. I hate to give up on her but I have a hard time justifying keeping goats that can't produce and I sure can't breed her as she is. I have 4 months to fatten her up or I need to make a hard decision. 

Since the eye infections in your lambs is somewhat recurring I would suspect Chlamydia psittaci ovis or Mycoplasma conjunctivae.


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## Eteda (Sep 11, 2017)

by human standards 3 is not young, but by animal standards she has just now come to the end of her growing stage. after she quits increasing in height she will start increasing in width and weight.       kinda where we get at age ..... never mind that thought.....     she'll be one h**l of a milker if she could ever catch up. she would be a great dairy goat for someone starting out with just two or three goats that would give her the opportunity to catch up. she would be a good baby setter for the other goats kids too if you just skip a year breeding her. If she has produced like that and been under weight, she has good genetics. She might make a good show goat for a local kid in 4-H for a year and then you could reevaluate her. that sounds like a win win situation for her and two people. You wouldn't have to make that hard decision right now, you could still remain her owner, but wouldn't have to feed her, but it would give her a chance to catch up if she had a year off. If she came back fat and sassy it would be a blessing. if she dont fatten up, sell her or give her to the kid, she would still be a blessing. We often beat up ourselves through our own conscience to do the right thing. Think of the delight in a child. Their is a little girl in our community that shows cows. she is to young to join 4-H so they let her any way and give her a ribbon. I am thinking of doing this with my sheep since they all lead, tie and bath already. I think children that live in the city would like to be involved with animals even though they have no land to keep them on. I've got to look in to that and see what all it would require.


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## babsbag (Sep 11, 2017)

She lets other kids nurse off of her...they are little snots. She is the low goat in my herd...lower than low as she doesn't even try to take them on. That is why I feed her alone most of the time. Some mornings she comes to get milked, which I don't do, but I do let her into the line up so she gets more grain that way. On mornings that she doesn't get into the milking corral she has uncontested access to grain and alfalfa pellets for about 30 minutes. She also has all the hay she wants all night long. She is a sweetie and would be a good showmanship goat if nothing else.  

My big concern is that the infection she had last year has somehow compromised her even though it appears to be gone.


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## Eteda (Sep 11, 2017)

My sheep Gia had an enlargement in her bag a few months after the lambs were sold in 2016. she was dried up. bathing her I noticed it. it wasn't but about 2 oz of fluid but it was there a slight swelling. I squirted some in a shot glass measuring container and it just wasn't right. I took in a sample to the vet. he sent it off. It came back as some bacteria they have never herd of. searching the internet it was only found in goats. I might have found one other sheep with it but I cant rember. It seemed so unknown. regardless I had to give her shots just behind the shoulder. treat  the mamry with antibiotics also. it scared her skin and her hair grows different. It was some form of mastitis. but she is my only registered ewe. she cleared up. and at lambing this past feb. she developed another infection in the other side I failed to catch. It was so simple to cure with just penicillin but she had already stopped producing. if it wasn't for the first bad side being good Id had to bottle feed form the get go. she nursed both lambs form the one side. I did supplement the ewe lamb but when I sold the ram the ewe had all the milk mom would give. a lot of times even when dry their is enough fluid in the teat gland to test. I think all you need is 1cc. the very next breeding this year she brought me the little white ewe from her I wanted so badly. she has only had two and I sold Ira and have regretted it since. I still think of Ira. so in honor of her sister I named her Mira. Gia is brown and always has rams. They are 2 days old in this picture. both sides of her bag are good with no infections as of to day.


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## babsbag (Sep 11, 2017)

Aren't they little cuties; love the coloring on the brown one, looks like they were sprinkled with powdered sugar.    Glad that you caught the mastitis and you were able to treat is successfully. I have one that lost half of her udder due to gangrene and another that has scar tissue in the teat so it is blocked. Both of them had kids this year and raised them just fine. I didn't intend to breed the one with scar tissue but she had other ideas.


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## Eteda (Sep 12, 2017)

babsbag ,  you can change that low goat in the heard thing. its pretty easy. I use calf mana to achieve it. Poor little mira in the pic above had the low sheep syndrome too. I gave her about 1/2 a cup of calf manna a day when she was about 3 months old. I worked her up to that over a period of two months. she was bouncing around the yard one day (high on calf manna)  and would go up to the older ewes and head but them in the hind end and run bouncing like crazy with delight. It was pay back time and she didn't care one iota.  They had no idea what to do they were speechless and she was to fast.  she was the classic hit and run. the little snot did it to me also. I busted out laughing.  I let her stay on that amount of feed for 3 - 4 days or so and slowly brought her back down to earth so to speak. but it was funny. no one picks on her any more.  She was running every where she had  so much energy she didn't know what to do. she climbed like a goat and jumped off the shearing stand ran to the porch and cleared the edge without the steps. she shook her head at them all like a mad bull. she twisted , bucked and reared. she looked for any excuse to run. she took off around the house and the whole herd took off after her. they though she was running form something. around they went. she caught up to the tail end and I had a merry go round of 73 sheep following each other around and around the house. She is still the smallest and youngest but she has made her place in the herd.  As soon as you bring in a new goat or some younger ones she will automatically be bumped up in the line of authority. however be really really careful and watch the animal carefully calf manna is so high in fat and protein its not worth messing one up with founder. you mentioned : She loves the Calf Manna and Goat Balancer. shes trying to tell you something. her body says to eat that.  we crave chocolate and potato chips rite? that's why we gain weight. we eat what taste good that we like.


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## babsbag (Sep 12, 2017)

That's hilarious, I can just see your little lamb doing a hit and run. Must have been fun to watch. I have fed calf manna sparingly. My oldest doe decided to free feed on some one day while I was being "entertained" by some other urgent matter and she was pretty sick for a week. I don't want to go through that again so when I bring calf manna here it is under lock and key.    But I do top dress feed in the dairy on occasion; I buy a bag about once a month.  She could probably use some extra...a  goat on steroids could be very interesting.


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## Sasmith (Oct 14, 2017)

This may sound stupid but back in my weight lifting fitness days if I needed to quickly pack on a few pounds I'd head down to GNC and buy a thing of weight gainer. It won't help with why they're under weight and I don't know how much protein vs carbs vs fat calories livestock need but 900 calories a serving will put weight on anything


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## lalabugs (Oct 14, 2017)

Have you tried cool calories? The horse rescue here uses it for skinny horses & old horses. It smells like Vanilla.


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## babsbag (Oct 14, 2017)

I haven't tried cool calories but I did top dress with one called Fat Cat and she pretty much ate around it...goats...  I have tried rice bran, cottonseed, and cottonseed meal and she isn't a fan of any of them. But give her the alfalfa and the regular grain and she could eat all day. 

She has issues with her ears too, always nasty smelling and now some bloody puss. She has been on antibiotics for ear infections before, she just can't kick it long term and although she is tested and cleared for all the "normal" stuff she may very well have other problems that I can't see. Not sure what to do about her.


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