Lump

[kstaven]

This is one of the reasons I NEVER buy anything from an auction, accept free animals, buy or allow an animal onto my property without full health certs and quarantine. It seems 9 times out of 10 you inherit some one elses problem buying animals these days. Even with all the testing in the world it still isn't 100%. With something like C.L. the bacteria can be tracked farm to farm by people.

Like many other things concerning animals, I think it is very safe to say that all of us have learned a thing or two the hard way. So don't be too hard on yourself.

 

[fortheloveofgoats]

This is so frustrating because, I told him I am new to all this. He even told me that I could have one goat. So like a idiot, I believed him. Instead of doing research. When I told him, I read you have to have more than one, he said I have another goat you can buy. I knew, he wasn't someone that loves goats, he just wants to make money. I have tried contacting him for proof, and he won't respond to me. I know that this is my own fault, sense I didn't do research, but he still didn't have to lie to me.

I so hear & feel your frustration!

My farm learned the hard way, unless you know the herd, see the testing results and/or treatment history of the animal, NEVER take a "free" goat. "Free" goats are never free. Someone else on here told me, when our little "free" buckling died from pneumonia, breeders never give a good/healthy goat away. :/ It is sad that some people feel they have to be deceitful in order to get someone to take their problem away. If we had just been told that he had a bad respiratory issue, or that most of her herd does every spring/summer, we either would have told her that we would find a healthy buckling, or we could have gotten him the treatment he needed so he wouldn't have died.
I truly hope that it is just a plain bacterial cyst and not CL.

We actually paid for her. He was wanting 75, but he told me if I bought her that day, he would take 65. So I said ok. It is sad that he was looking at his goats as money makers. When he told me I could buy a friend for my goat, he would give me the same deal. He was offering the other one because she only gave him one baby. So she was no good for him. He took in free goats, and would turn around and sale them. He left them out in a pasture, and didn't give them anything else. He said all they need is blackberries. The whole dang thing is sad, I was at least happy to get her out of there. She was deathly afraid of us, but once she found out we were good, she was like one of my dogs.

 

[fortheloveofgoats]

Abscesses are actually the immune system 'walling off' the bacteria, to keep it from spreading. When a goat w/ an abscess is skinned, the abscess can be seen / cut away w/ out bursting it, they're actually quite tough buggers until they're 'ripe'.

If you couldn't eat goats w/ CL, I would guess that about 1/4 the goats sent to butcher wouldn't get eaten.

It's a LOT more common, esp. w/ meat goats, than most folks will admit to. Most folks just send them off to butcher, unless it's a valuable show animal, then they keep em, breed em and THEN sell them for slaughter....after exposing the rest of the herd...and continuing the problem.

I kept mine / dealt w/ it b/c of sentimental reasons, and 10 yrs later I'm STILL dealing w/ it....if I knew then, what I know now...I'da culled the lot of them.

And for those who don't know, we 'caught' CL from boer does bought from another state, w/ health papers. :/

Thank you again for your help. I was talking to my husband, and he said that for sure if she turns out positive, we will cull her. like you suggested.

 

[fortheloveofgoats]

This is one of the reasons I NEVER buy anything from an auction, accept free animals, buy or allow an animal onto my property without full health certs and quarantine. It seems 9 times out of 10 you inherit some one elses problem buying animals these days. Even with all the testing in the world it still isn't 100%. With something like C.L. the bacteria can be tracked farm to farm by people.

Like many other things concerning animals, I think it is very safe to say that all of us have learned a thing or two the hard way. So don't be too hard on yourself.

That is why I didn't go to the auction. I know that those places are bad for sick animals. I went to someone's house, and believed everything he said. Like an uniformed idiot.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

I can't stress it enough: Don't let the vet come to your property to do the lancing... make sure it is done at the vet's... cause if it turns out to be CL, then it will destroy your property for goats for years.

Also, please stop referring to yourself as an idiot. We all have made decisions that we ended up regretting later on for one reason or another. You are not an idiot.

 

[kstaven]

Like I said in the previous post. We have all been there at some point. We need more people like yourself and many others who hang out here to get into animals and farming. At least then we would see problems dealt with rather than passed on.

 

[fortheloveofgoats]

I can't stress it enough: Don't let the vet come to your property to do the lancing... make sure it is done at the vet's... cause if it turns out to be CL, then it will destroy your property for goats for years.

Also, please stop referring to yourself as an idiot. We all have made decisions that we ended up regretting later on for one reason or another. You are not an idiot.

Yeah, thank you for re posting that, I did forget. Thank you! I hope that she's not. I really do love her. Thank you also for making some of the guilt go away. I usually am not one to just like something and go get it. I do all the research that I can. This was the first, and LAST time that I do that. Thank you for being such a kind person.

 

[fortheloveofgoats]

Like I said in the previous post. We have all been there at some point. We need more people like yourself and many others who hang out here to get into animals and farming. At least then we would see problems dealt with rather than passed on.

You are right as well. If only he would have talked to me about it. Oh well at least she has it better than what she had before.

 

[babsbag]

I owned my first 3 goats for over a year before I learned about CL. I didn't even know enough to ask when I bought mine. I had one of my original does and a new wether get a lump under the ear and the vet thought for sure it was CL. So I tested the entire herd, at the time that was 8 goats. And while 2 did test positive for CL, it was not the ones with the lumps. Their lumps went away and never even came close to rupturing; the vet could not get any thing out of them either. My 2 positive does have not had an abcess in the 3 years that I have owned them and they have both kidded multiple times since I bought them. I expected an outbreak after the stress of kidding but it never came. I test my herd yearly and the rest of my herd test clean.

Don't give up yet, it might not be CL

 

[kstaven]

There is an interesting difference in attitude concerning C.L.in North America than that in many parts of Europe. Here we tend to stress over it and consider it the end of the world while on the other side of the ocean it is "Lance the lump, clean it up and back to business as usual" They treat it more as a fact of life and having goats.