I just read the post above mine on hoof rot and i have a few questions of my own - and i am going to take you thru her history so maybe you can help clear up my confusion. I am still relatively new to goats and have never had this problem before. 2 year old doe - gemini - we bought her when she was a yearling. her feet looked like knarled ski's of some sort. we got her home and didn't have any problem with her at all, got her feet trimmed up and in a few months they were looking almost normal. After she kidded i noticed that she started to limp on her front leg, upon inspection there was absoulutely nothing that i could see so i thought maybe she twisted it and i decided to give her a few days and see what i see. well a week later she is still limping and i begin to notice this god awful oder when i milked her. smelled like rotten flesh, so i look her over real good, trying to figure out what the smell is and where is it coming from.. couldn't find anything at all, but when i picked up her feet, i knew that was the source of the smell. went in and got a bucket of hot water and washed her feet real good so i could see better and i STILL couldn't see what the heck was wrong. so i called the vet, she came out and told me that "it" was bec her feet had not touched the ground in so long, that she had an infection in between her toes. told me to give her pennicilian 6cc for three days and soak her foot in epsom salt. She also tells me that she will have to heal this from the inside out. we did the three days of shots and i soaked her foot twice a day for 5 days, odor was gone and she was no longer limping. few days later the odor is back and she's limping again! so i call the vet back and tell is it isn't working, can we try something else? she tells me to put her back on pennicillan for seven more day, thats where we are now, today is the fifth day. no odor and no limping. What i don't understand, is is this foot rot? the vet would NOT say that it was, and she woulsn't say that it wasn't. all she would say was that it came from not having her feet on the ground in so long. i bought her a year ago!! since then her feet have been trimmed regularly - as a matter of fact the first person to trim her was a man who has raised goats and sheep for 30 years - her feet were in such bad shape i didn'tknow how to correct that so i took her to him so he could show me how far i could go down tc..so i know her feet have been in good shape for a year. so why did this happen to her now?? I also asked the vet if i should separate her from the others and she said she saw no reason to. No one else has this problem. It has been unusually wet this spring so in the first stall where they always come in the barn i have a pretty good layer of lime down that they have to walk thru in order to get to the hay and grain. I just don't know what this is, if it's hoof rot why did she get it now? why did the vet not tell me to separate? will the pennicillan help her ( it didn't the first time ) her hoof is in good shape, strong and well trimmed. and when the vet separated her toes for me to see, i smelled but really didn't see anything, certainly nothing that would have produced an odor like that. Anyone have any answers for me??? And can she heal from this? That was something else the vet wouldn't/couldnt tell me.

-- Susan (dsowen@tds.net), May 06, 2002

Answers

I think the key to this is the doe kidding. Stress even from something we thing should cause it, like kidding, can weaken a does immune system. So can not understanding the really important realtionship between nutrition and immune function. Where are you located. Do you belong to a goat club so you can find out what minerals you really need in your area? Without cooper fed in what is normally considered excessive amounts, goats will have horrible parasite problems in our area. Lots of resistance seen in wormers is seen from mineral problems. Horrid hair coats and bad feed are also caused from lack of copper in the mineral. Keopertox a very well known foot rot liquid, is mostly copper. Secondly if the first full round of penicillin didn't touch the foot rot, than switch to tetracycline! Just make sure that the reason wasn't because she got better so you stopped the penicillin! Most hoof/foot rot is not in the hoof at all but up between the toes. Also the reason the boards are full of this right now is because does have just freshened, goats have just went through several months of winter, in wet pastures, and in barns full of shavings and hay to stand on. Now it's spring with rain, humidity etc. so previous problems that were not really cleared up start rearing their ugly heads! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 07, 2002.

I am in Indiana, and we are selenium deficient. I feed them a good grain mix with a dairy supplement in it and provide loose minerals (ones for cows ) The hay that is offered to them is alfalfa and they eat it, but they like to go out to the pasture and help the cows with thier grass hay too. they run thru the woods and nibble here and there as well. Will she heal from this? what is tetracycline?

-- Susan (dsowen@tds.net), May 07, 2002.

Most larger feed stores, Tractor Supply etc. carry antibitotics, which tetracycline is one. Better yet call 1800-Jeffers and have them send you their livestock catalog. In their is Oxytet 200, Biomycin 200 and other Tetracyclines with 200 milligrams of tetracycline in them. Do not order LA200 it has a very powerfull carrier in it that stings. Now go to saanendoah.com and click on meds, then on injectable antibitotics and then click on tetracycline, it will give you the exact dose to give to your goat per her weight. It will be given under the skin. Considering tetracycline is labeled for the treatment of hoofrot, I would have thought it would have been your vets first choice. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 07, 2002.

Vicki, I'm rusty on footrot, but wasn't there a product called Coopertox that had a copper compound that was used externally to help control it? Seems like I rember an article in the Journal about a using a trough for dairy goats to walk through on approach to the milking parlor. This make sense?

-- Dennis (westwoodcaprine@yahoo.com), May 08, 2002.

Hi Dennis, glad to see you back! There is like 3 threads going all at once about this, so hopefully everyone is just reading all of them. But you are correct on the Kopertox. It would be an interesting idea to use a walk through water bath as you let the girls leave from milking. Kopertox would be sticky and to expensive but perhaps copper sulfate or the like. One dairy I visited on vacation had a very steep incline from the barn to the cement milking room, I would bet traveling on it twice a day keeps some of the hoof trimming at bay also! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 08, 2002.

We did a foot bath for our sheep while I was growing up. Grandpa welded it, and as close as I can remember (not too good at mental distance:)) it was aboit 16" wide by 8-10' long and 6-8" deep. It was in a runway, with a gate on either end, so that if you had some old ewes with problem footrot, you could have them stand in it a few minutes. It was a few years ago, though, we were still using formaldihyde as the dip...nasty stuff. Anyway, maybe a set up like that with the copper based solution in it? Footrot is terrible stuff to deal with. Have a great day! Cara

-- Cara Dailey (daileyd@agalis.net), May 08, 2002.

She seems to be fine now, although she is still on the penicillin, and the lime seems to be keeping her feet dry (er). I am going to try to copper based walk thru thing, i hate this and i hope i never have to deal with it again. It surprises me that no one else has come down with this since foor rot is contagious. She is also a very fat doe, she is fed half of what everyone else is fed and she's fat as a hog. she gets about 1 and a quarter pound of grain a day and i would give her less, but can she continue to produce milk on less?

-- Susan (dsowen@tds.net), May 09, 2002.

My parents are raisig goats. We bought seven does. When we got them home we noticed they were limping. We didn't know what wa going on. after about a month I noticed that their feet smelt really bad and were swollen open at the tips. I told my mom that the goats have foot rot which when buying from a auction is common so I was told. Finally my brother and step dad held them as I cleaned the hoofs out,soaked them in epson salt then I put DMSO on them which can be bought at your local feed store. It worked great. Make sure to wear rubber gloves or it will effect you as well as the goat. If your goats are in a wet area where their feet will be wet all the time it will come back.

-- Kathy Simmons (justfrogen76861@aol.com), February 25, 2005.