help!! goat has inury on hoof

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I have been reading this forum for at least a year,and now I have a question I hope you can help with.We just purchaced dairy goats several days ago,and the five year old female was afraid of our dog and when she saw him,she would stamp her foot repeatedly at him to scare him away.In the process of this I believe she injured her front hoof. She now is limping and is putting less weight on it each day so I believe it is worsening.I tryed soaking it and she would'nt let me.I looked for rocks and didnt see any wedged in her hoof . I hate to wait and see if it will heal on its own as each day it seems worse. Thank you

-- M (combsclan@prodigy.net), April 18, 2002

Answers

You need to get a good look at it .Is the hoof cracked ? Look very well fo rocks,sticks,glass anything in the hook clean it out well .Run your hand down her good leg then the inguried one can you feel a difference ? Also check fo fever to make sure you don't have an infection.

-- Patty Gamble (fodfarms@hotmail.com), April 18, 2002.

~ If no physical injury/irritant can be found, I'll relate a similar situation had with a pet african billy many years ago. As many nasty creepy crawly critters exist here in the desert SW, when nothing could be found as the cause for a swollen limb, giving a full adult dose of benadryl to this 150 lb billy stopped progression of swell-n. Later, 1/2 dose on 8hr intervils for a few days did the trick. Best guess was that a spider or similar was the cause. Good luck to ya...

-- Re Load (RELOAD@abilnet.com), April 18, 2002.

Not a vet but look up hoof abcess on google and you'll get a lot of great info.

We had a horse the other day slightly not favoring one foot. You could barely notice but when riding he pitched a fit (very unlike this very broke horse). There was a slight heat in his leg and we watched him closely the next day but he was putting less weight on it.

Anyhoo, called vet and she came out. Said it was an abcess. There was the tiniest of cracks on bottom of his hoof. You wouldn't have noticed it by just looking. We get regular ferrier visits and this horse's hooves looked fine. It's been raining alot and she said dirt could get up in that crack and start an infection like a boil.

Remedy: She put a soak boot on him and said to change the Epsom salt water 2x day. Gave him a little bute to help with discomfort. She said in couple of days the abcess will break in coronet band. Put some iodine on it.

She didn't advise any antibotics but I read that the infection if not treated can travel up leg into soft tissue and bone so muy importante to take care of this pronto.

We don't hesitate to call the vet anyway but we're super glad we called her asap and got it taken of and it was NOT a tendon injury.

Good luck.

-- zeb (wrangler@jridgeranch.com), April 18, 2002.


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