Treating mastitis in goats?

[zzGypsy]

If I had a goat with a slight case of mastitis, and I was dam raising, I'd leave the kids on. If it was a really awful case, I'd pull them off.
And if the Today doesn't clear up the udder, it's best to have a culture done to see exactly what type of mastitis the goat has. Not all meds treat all mastitis.

that's what our vet had us do. he says the constant milking down of the udder is part of what helps to clear up low-grade and resistant mastitis. we talked about the option of doing a culture, but the vet suggested if the symptoms were decreasing, let the kid do the work. if we had started to lose ground, we would then have done the culture. in our case, the vet's suggestion worked just as he predicted. he'd seen some other cases of resistant mastitis in his practice and had better results with what we did than with culturing and treating directly. several of his other cases had to be culled out of the milking herds because they were not able to get effective treatment.

 

[cmjust0]

Ask your vet about using injectable erythromycin.. It's called 'Gallimycin 100' and you can buy a 100ml bottle for like $11, OTC, from PBSAnimalHealth.com... I have some in my cabinet for just such a situation, though I haven't had a case of mastitis upon which to test it out..

The reason I'm suggesting it is because, some time ago, I started thinking about *why* certain antibiotics were used over others in certain situations, and I began thinking about routes of elimination from the body.. For instance, urination is one of penicillin's main routes of elimination from the body; consequently, it's really good at treating bladder infections.. Why? Well, because it passes right through the bladder on its way out! Makes sense, right?

Well, then I read that the milk withdrawal on erythromycin is pretty lengthy because it reaches **high** levels in milk when given to lactating animals.. Which is to say, lactation may be one of the main routes of elimination of erythromycin.. Putting 2+2 together led me to wonder whether erythromycin might be a good injectable medication for mastitis, and sure enough, I started reading where dairy farmers use it somewhat regularly for that purpose..

Anyway, it might be something to ask the vet about..

 

[aggieterpkatie]

If I had a goat with a slight case of mastitis, and I was dam raising, I'd leave the kids on. If it was a really awful case, I'd pull them off.
And if the Today doesn't clear up the udder, it's best to have a culture done to see exactly what type of mastitis the goat has. Not all meds treat all mastitis.

that's what our vet had us do. he says the constant milking down of the udder is part of what helps to clear up low-grade and resistant mastitis. we talked about the option of doing a culture, but the vet suggested if the symptoms were decreasing, let the kid do the work. if we had started to lose ground, we would then have done the culture. in our case, the vet's suggestion worked just as he predicted. he'd seen some other cases of resistant mastitis in his practice and had better results with what we did than with culturing and treating directly. several of his other cases had to be culled out of the milking herds because they were not able to get effective treatment.

Yep. Only if it was really bloody and clumpy I'd pull them off b/c they'd not be getting enough milk.


And about the ACV for treating milk fever....really? They say you just put it in the water or ration? There's no way I'd ever treat a cow that way. Maybe *after* I treated with IV calcium I'd add it, but no way in heck I'd rely on just ACV with a case of milk fever. Cows go down quick and it can be really scary. I'd want immediate treatment.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

And about the ACV for treating milk fever....really? They say you just put it in the water or ration? There's no way I'd ever treat a cow that way. Maybe *after* I treated with IV calcium I'd add it, but no way in heck I'd rely on just ACV with a case of milk fever. Cows go down quick and it can be really scary. I'd want immediate treatment.

I don't believe that the ACV is used as a treatment for Milk Fever, but rather as a preventative against it.
Is that correct MrsDieselEngineer?

 

[aggieterpkatie]

And about the ACV for treating milk fever....really? They say you just put it in the water or ration? There's no way I'd ever treat a cow that way. Maybe *after* I treated with IV calcium I'd add it, but no way in heck I'd rely on just ACV with a case of milk fever. Cows go down quick and it can be really scary. I'd want immediate treatment.

I don't believe that the ACV is used as a treatment for Milk Fever, but rather as a preventative against it.
Is that correct MrsDieselEngineer?

This is the part that had me wondering:

He also found that mastits could be treated with vinegar in the ration, the clincher being that the animals he tested with recouperated 100% with no long term negative effects for having contracted mastitis in the first place. Mastitis can ruin a bag. His findings were the same, if I recall correctly, with milk fever. Complete recovery with nothing more than apple cider vinegar in the ration.

I'm not even sure how you'd get a cow w/ milk fever to eat or drink.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

And about the ACV for treating milk fever....really? They say you just put it in the water or ration? There's no way I'd ever treat a cow that way. Maybe *after* I treated with IV calcium I'd add it, but no way in heck I'd rely on just ACV with a case of milk fever. Cows go down quick and it can be really scary. I'd want immediate treatment.

I don't believe that the ACV is used as a treatment for Milk Fever, but rather as a preventative against it.
Is that correct MrsDieselEngineer?

This is the part that had me wondering:

He also found that mastits could be treated with vinegar in the ration, the clincher being that the animals he tested with recouperated 100% with no long term negative effects for having contracted mastitis in the first place. Mastitis can ruin a bag. His findings were the same, if I recall correctly, with milk fever. Complete recovery with nothing more than apple cider vinegar in the ration.

I'm not even sure how you'd get a cow w/ milk fever to eat or drink.

I'm not sure about cows either... and I'm not sure as MrsDieselEngineer does either... but this thread is about treating mastitis in goats... maybe you could find someone under the cows section that could help you with that? :/

 

[aggieterpkatie]

I don't believe that the ACV is used as a treatment for Milk Fever, but rather as a preventative against it.
Is that correct MrsDieselEngineer?

This is the part that had me wondering:

He also found that mastits could be treated with vinegar in the ration, the clincher being that the animals he tested with recouperated 100% with no long term negative effects for having contracted mastitis in the first place. Mastitis can ruin a bag. His findings were the same, if I recall correctly, with milk fever. Complete recovery with nothing more than apple cider vinegar in the ration.

I'm not even sure how you'd get a cow w/ milk fever to eat or drink.

I'm not sure about cows either... and I'm not sure as MrsDieselEngineer does either... but this thread is about treating mastitis in goats... maybe you could find someone under the cows section that could help you with that? :/

I don't really need to know how, because I already know how to treat it. LOL. It just kinda went off on a tangent.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

I don't believe that the ACV is used as a treatment for Milk Fever, but rather as a preventative against it.
Is that correct MrsDieselEngineer?

This is the part that had me wondering:

I'm not even sure how you'd get a cow w/ milk fever to eat or drink.

I'm not sure about cows either... and I'm not sure as MrsDieselEngineer does either... but this thread is about treating mastitis in goats... maybe you could find someone under the cows section that could help you with that? :/

I don't really need to know how, because I already know how to treat it. LOL. It just kinda went off on a tangent.

Gotchya!

 

[MrsDieselEngineer]

Nope, no experience with cows As far as goats go, I'm pretty sure ACV is a preventative not a treatment. Someone correct me if I'm wrong
Oh, and I've never dealt with Milk Fever and really don't know much about it.

 

[Beekissed]

Yep...preventative in all the articles I've read about it. And, of course, an ounce of prevention.....

Whenever I am presented with a problem with livestock husbandry, particularly with health, I always plan for prevention of it right along with the treatment of it.

I know that I don't want to deal with that problem ever again and the best way is to find out how to prevent it. It matters not that they have used it in cows and found it successful....I'd imagine that anything with an udder that may get mastitis would respond in the same way. Even us....