Dealing With Annie's Mastitis

Annie, our Nubian goat, has struggled with mastitis for a while.  Milking her has always been a pain - for us and for her.  She kicks like a saddle bronc every time we milk.  She doesn't let her kids nurse for very long.  We normally shy away from antibiotics.  We normally try natural remedies.  Up to this point, we've been unsuccessful in the methods we've experimented with.  We resorted to trying an antibiotic treatment to attempt to finally clear up Annie's mastitis.

Tricia purchased some Today syringes which are to be inserted into the teats in order to inject the meds to fight off the infection.  You can purchase this at your feed store or Tractor Supply Company. Tonight we started the "Today" process.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow.  Ha Ha!

We went out the the barn at night right before supper and used alcohol to wipe down Annie's teats in order to keep things extra clean.

I have cleats on the milking stanchion and we put ropes around Annie's feet and secured them to the cleats.  This will keep her from kicking as we insert the syringe about a quarter inch into each of her two teats and inject the medicine.  We put some dairy ration and alfalfa pellets in her trough to somewhat distract her.

Tricia inserted the syringe into her teat and injected it all in.  It went surprisingly smooth!

She held the teat closed and used her thumb and index finger to push the meds upward into her bag.

Nothing dripped out.  We did the same thing on the other side.  The directions say to use every 12  hours, but only two doses.  Others, including some veterinarians, say to use it until it clears up.  Tricia did the California Mastitis Test after the second dose and she still showed some slight mastitis.  We may give it one more dose and then test again.  If it doesn't clear up, we may have to culture and see exactly which bacteria we're fighting and get the appropriate meds to knock this stuff out.

Kind of discouraging, but we'll keep trying.  Perhaps we'll find the "Annie-biotic" that will work.  I know Annie (and Tricia) will be happy.

Antibiotics For Annie

With milkmaid Tricia being in the hospital, we figured it would be too much to try to keep milking Daisy, our Jersey cow, and Annie, our Nubian goat.  Daisy was making about a gallon of milk a day and very late in lactation, so we stopped milking her and her bag quickly went down.

Annie proved to be another story.  She was late in lactation as well.  I read that in order to dry off a goat, the best thing to do was to cut the feed ration down and then just quit cold turkey.  Well, a couple days afterward, Annie's teats seemed engorged. They weren't hard or hot, but she was having some difficulty walking and just seemed lethargic.  She laid around a lot. Could this be the beginning of mastitis? We're not sure.  To further complicate matters, she had a foot problem that just wouldn't clear up.

We use antibiotics very, very sparingly, but with everything going on, we figured we would just give Annie a dose of penicillin and hopefully it would clear up her problem.  For a 125 pound goat, we were to give her 2 cc's once a day for seven days.

So that is exactly what we are doing.  We draw a little more than 2 cc's out of the jar and then inject it back in the bottle to eliminate air bubbles.

This photo isn't good at all, but what you want to do is give the shot beneath the skin.  To do this you simply pull the skin up on the neck, making a "tent."

Then you inject the antibiotic directly into the "tent" you've made with her skin.  She didn't seem to be bothered by it all all.

We are on day 3 now, so we have 4 more days to go with shots.  Hopefully, Annie will get back to normal quickly with the antibiotics she's on.

Get Well, Annie.