Anyone seen lumps like this?

[babsbag]

This does is 5 years old and has had these lumps for 4 years, ever since her first freshening. They are getting larger and there are more of them each year. Her kids nurse fine. They do not seem to hurt, they are under the skin, they are not abscesses, and they are there even when she is not in milk. They are only on the teats. I can no longer milk her as I can't squeeze the teat hard enough to get milk, the lumps are in the way. I may get them biopsied just to see what they are.

Any ideas.

 

[alsea1]

No clue. But do let us know when you find out what they are

 

[OneFineAcre]

I got my wife to look at the pictures last night. She used to work on a dairy.
She had never seen anything like that.
Maybe some type of fibroid tumors?

 

[babsbag]

If she worked on a dairy she probably has seen a lot so it is always nice to know I'm weird...again. My vet says I bring her the strangest things; wait 'til she sees this.

 

[goatgurl]

are the lumps hard or soft? i worked on a cow dairy years ago and we had a cow that had teats that looked like that. vet said that the teat (milk) channel had aneurysm type bulges in them. not in the veins but in the channel above the teat orifices. they were soft and pliable, we could milk her with the automatic milkers without a problem. i would hesitate to keep any daughters for fear they would have that genetic weakness also. hope that helps

 

[OneFineAcre]

I found out what they are. Those are called "weeping teats". You can google it and find some more information on it. But, at a high level:

"Weeping teats are probably a variation of what is called a web teat in dairy cattle. In goats, these small masses of secretory tissue, which are usually numerous, are commonly located on the teat near its base, but may be located on the udder near the base of the teat. These masses of secretory tissue usually communicate to the outside through small pores in the side of the teat. .....These tissues become obvious in early lactatin because of contamination of the teat skin with the secretions. Occasionally one or two of these small masses of secretory tissue does not have an opening and accumulates milk to form a milk cyst in the wall of the teat (usually near it's base)."

Sheep and Goat Medicine by D.G Pugh pg 344.


We had a meeting of the NC Dairy Goat Breeders Association at our house today. We had a speaker who is a professor at the NC State Vet school who did a presentation on mastitis in dairy goats. He had several slides that were an overview of mammary structure and issues. He showed a slide on "weeping teats" and I said "oh my gosh, that looks like babsbag's picture. After he finished I got my computer out and showed him and he said that's what it was. Mostly seen in Saanens.

 

[Southern by choice]

Well there ya go Babs! Now you have an answer!
Strange indeed!

The goat... well, ok, maybe you too!

 

[goatgurl]

cool beans! good to know it has a name and we now know what it is and isn't. thanks for the info.

 

[hilarie]

So interesting! I've caught up this thread tonight - been a crazy busy summer so I'm on BYH only intermittently - but this grabbed my attention immediately, because I too have a doe with udder/teats like this. She's a LaMancha, will be 7 this year and I've had her since age 4. She's always had these lumps, but they've become more pronounced every year. They're painless and fortunately I've been able to milk her despite them - good thing since she's a fabulous producer. I've never seen any surface secretion from her. Unfortunately, she also has a very pendulous udder, so much so that I'm retiring her after this year. In late pregnancy, that udder was virtually on the ground this spring, and it kills BOTH of us. I did keep one of her doelings last spring and was going to breed her this fall; now I'm wondering if I should....she and her mother are the sweetest goats I own and mama is a mega-milker. What to do....

 

[babsbag]

are the lumps hard or soft? i worked on a cow dairy years ago and we had a cow that had teats that looked like that. vet said that the teat (milk) channel had aneurysm type bulges in them. not in the veins but in the channel above the teat orifices. they were soft and pliable, we could milk her with the automatic milkers without a problem. i would hesitate to keep any daughters for fear they would have that genetic weakness also. hope that helps

I just showed the pictures to my vet last week and she said the same thing. I asked about hereditary issues and she said that it is possible. I have two of her daughters and her mother. Mother is fine and daughters have not been bred as of yet, guess we will see as one will for sure be bred this year, maybe both of them.