Jumping the Moon Dairy - the next chapter

The fires near me are either out or close to out and the air quality has improved by a bunch. Still can't see all the mountains like we do after a rain but soon.

I still have coughing baby goats but none are sick like Moonpie and the one little one was. I am watching them closely and trying not to use drugs if I don't have to. Three I gave the pneumonia vaccine to and they seem to be coughing less. I probably should vaccinate all the kids .

I hope they all get back to 100% soon!

Hope all the goats come out healthy without any long term damage, glad the fires are out by you.

The life of a dairy owner...what have I done? Here's the latest saga.

I have been struggling with a high bacteria count in the bulk tank in spite of everything being cleaned beyond clean and I have failed two of my last 4 tests so I decided that I needed to check the Somatic Cell Counts of my goats. I realize that SCC and bacteria is not the same but I needed to start somewhere and a high SCC can be an indicator of an udder infection (bacteria). They all look fine, milk fine, act fine, but something is driving the numbers up and I need to find it in order to stay a Grade A dairy. I bought the Porta SCC test for goats to do this at home; super easy to use. I am milking 40 goats so I decided to do the milk samples in groups of 8 and then if they were high I would just test the does from the high group(s), no reason to use all the test strips if I don't need to. Well it turns out that two of my groups did indeed test high, very high, over 300,000 / ml. which is the highest the test reports and according to the directions indicates an udder infection. So next I tested the goats in those groups individually and 4 came back with over 300,000 SCC. Strangely enough they all have "interesting" histories.

One had gangrene mastitis 3 years ago and lost 1/2 of her udder. She milks like a dream.
One had been very very sick two years ago with an ear infection and horrible cough, I wasn't even milking her then, she was too sick. It was Trueperella pyogenes, which is an opportunistic organism and can cause internal abscesses. I almost culled her then. Her udder is horrible, hangs like a football
One is a FF with no kids on her. Her udder is normal on one side and the other side is very small with almost no milk, but not hot or abnormal. I pulled her kids at birth and this is how she developed. The last one is just a big old Alpine that is a milking machine. There were a few years that she didn't settle and she would still come into milk.

So I took a clean catch from those 4 does, plus two others that had "plugs" in their teats every time I milk. The tests came back that two of the four with high SCC are shedding a large amount of bacteria; the doe that had mastitis years ago and the one with a small udder half. One is shedding Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the other they don't know what the bacteria is and they sent it out to another lab. The other 2 with high SCC do not show any bacteria in their milk. One of the others has a very low grade staph infection in one half and I am waiting on sensitivity testing before treating. I can't buy any OTC antibiotics in CA so I have to work with my vet on this.

The State took its official bulk tank milk sample and if there is still a problem I will not be able to sell fluid milk until I sort this out and pass three tests. I would be able to make cheese, just no Grade A products.

The life of a dairy owner...

Did I mention that Mia had puppies? They are 1.5 weeks old. 6 boys, 2 girls. Mia says that it is great being a mama dog living at a dairy. Goat milk...YUM!!!!

Love the pups! Ahhhh..puppy breath & snuggles. What mix are they?

Hope your SCC issues clear and are not major issues.

Praying for ya!
Cute pups! Congrats!

Love the pups!!! Look at that brindle - it's so stinkin' cute!

Hope you get your dairy issues sorted out.

The pups are beautiful

That really stinks about the abnormal goats. So do you have to get rid of those goats now or just treat them with something?

The pups are super adorable!