Hi there! I am new to this group and so happy to be here! I live in rainy Bellingham, WA and have two wethers - Mr. Brown & Al - that are about 11 months old. I am a first time goat owner who has experienced my fair share of goat complexities over this past year, and this forum and the Thrifty Homesteader site have been so helpful in finding answers to my goats' issues.
Over the past couple weeks, I've noticed that Mr. Brown is losing hair on the bridge of his nose, the base of his ears, around his eyes, and on the backs of his front legs. He doesn't seem to be too bothered by the hairless patches - he is scratching a bit but not any more than normal. His coat is also coarse and slightly oily (his coat has always been much coarser than Al's, who has the softest shiniest coat). He is acting totally normal and appears to be in good spirits otherwise.
Mr. Brown and Al have 24/7 free access to grass hay, MannaPro minerals (which I am replacing with SweetLix Meat Maker this week - just waiting for it to be delivered), and fresh water (we have well water with a chlorine treatment system). Up until about 3 or 4 months ago, they were getting 0.5 cup each of Purina Goat Grower 16 DQ .0015, which I then replaced with the Standlee Timothy Grass pellets to transition them off of the grain. They LOVE the grass pellets and get about 0.5-0.75 cups each every morning. Most days, they get a very small handful of black oil sunflower seeds as a "treat" and I've recently added free choice icelandic kelp to their diet, which they love and gobble up quickly.
They are on Molly's Herbal Worm Formula as a preventative. Both goats have had several bouts of scours and Al had a mysterious, persistent cough that lasted months - ever since adding Molly's Herbal's their scours have been perfectly normal and Al's cough finally went away. Hooray!
I am curious if anyone can provide insight into Mr. Brown's hair loss. Zinc deficiency? Copper? Mites?
Thanks in advance!
Taylor
Replies
If you really want to do cafeteria style minerals, you need really believe that they work. Last week I felt like I was beating my head against the wall with someone who was "doing cafeteria style minerals" but giving her goats copper oxide wire particles and telling me that they never eat the copper free choice -- mostly just the zinc and sulfur!!! I tried telling her they are BOTH copper antagonists and the goats obviously don't need the copper, but since she forced it into them, now they're trying to compensate by increasing their zinc and sulfur. She says she's only going to keep giving them the copper oxide wire particles until they start eating the copper free choice. Ugh! That is not how you do cafeteria style minerals.
I actually had the honor of interviewing the man who pioneered the idea of nutritional wisdom of animals on my podcast last year. https://thriftyhomesteader.com/nutritional-wisdom-of-goats/
Ah-hah, thank you Deborah! I wasn't savvy to "secondary copper deficiency" concerns but have just read through your materials (including your wonderful "Copper Deficiency" course on Teachable) and I think you're right...the COWP aren't fully effective because my goats are regularly ingesting copper antagonists...some of which I'm unintentionally feeding them via sheep-mineral premix! Aurgh! I have been intending to switch to cafeteria-style minerals for awhile now and will get that done this month. Thank you once again for helping me identify what's happening here. Many cheers!
That mineral has 2% sulfur, which goats and sheep do not need. I wound up with copper deficient sheep many years ago because I had bought a sheep mineral with molybdenum. Both sulfur and molybdenum are copper antagonists, so some companies put them into sheep minerals out of paranoia. There is close to 0% chance that a sheep is going to get copper toxicity when just grazing, but they add copper antagonists to the minerals to make sure they absorb even the tiny amount of copper that is in the forage, which is ridiculous.
I'm also not a fan of minerals that have no salt and tell you to put salt out separately. Almost all minerals have salt in them because salt is used to drive consumption of mineral mixes because goats need a little and they like it. But they can only consume so much, which also stops them from over-consuming minerals. Like, how many french fries are you going to eat if someone spilled the salt on them?
Here is an example of hair regrowth after giving copper oxide.
amy said:
Thank you Deborah, I very much appreciate learning all that, especially about the BOSS.
I give my flerd Midwest BioAg free-choice loose sheep mineral + loose Redmond salt + I supplement the goats with copper particles (they'll eat them mixed with a bit of dry quick-cook oats!), 1g copper per 20-25# of bodyweight. I first gave them copper in December and then again in March when the hair loss began. It was about 2 weeks between giving the 2nd dose of copper and seeing the hair improve, so that matches up with what you're saying. That makes me feel better!
I bought these ~1 year old does as an easy-handling way to explore small-scale dairy but then decided not to breed them because their conformations aren't what I'd like. I will follow the advice of your article and think of them as wethers for dietary purposes. I'd started giving them BOSS for the oil content after 1 of them developed dry winter skin.
Thank you again for your generosity in teaching!
If that is the only hair loss you're seeing, it could be copper deficiency. This is really common. It takes about 3 weeks for the hair to grow back on the bridge of the nose after you give them the correct dose of copper. If they live with your sheep, then you are either not giving them a mineral at all or you're providing one for "sheep and goats," which has NO copper in it because sheep are very sensitive to copper.
You didn't say how much copper oxide you gave them or when, which would also have an effect. It might have taken more than one dose to get them to the point where the hair would grow back.
Although sunflower seeds and alfalfa are great foods, they would do nothing for a mineral deficiency. Alfalfa pellets are simply pulverized alfalfa hay, and a cup of it isn't much. My milkers consume 100% alfalfa hay. BOSS is very high in protein, so a cup a day is lot and is not recommended. It doesn't have enough of any mineral in it to correct a deficiency of anything.
Here is an article about what goats eat -- it varies depending on whether it's a buck, wether, dry doe, pregnant doe, or milking doe, or a kid. https://thriftyhomesteader.com/what-do-goats-eat-it-depends/
amy said:
Hello! I have a similar situation and a theory! I have a goat with similar hair loss on her ears and bridge of nose, starting a few weeks ago in mid-March. I have 2 goats total and only 1 of them is having this issue. She doesn't appear to be suffering. I bought these goats a few months ago, my first time with goats, they live with my sheep and seem to have integrated well-enough. I supplement them with copper bolus so they shouldn't be deficient. A few days ago I started hand-feeding the 2 goats an extra cup of alfalfa pellets and a cup of BOSS (sunflower) each morning, and the balding goat is seeming to recover. My current theory is that she was lacking some nutrient/mineral BECAUSE she is a particularly timid individual and perhaps is not getting her fair share when competing with the other goats/sheep for the best bits of food. At least that is the biggest difference I notice between the balding-goat and the okay-goat: personality difference in their feeding habits. Just an idea! :) Thanks for all the other ideas!
I have never seen that kind of hair loss on a goat. Poor guy!
I agree with Tammy about a university vet hospital. They have dermatologists who are amazing. My daughter adopted a dog from a very shady rescue when she was in college. The dog had so little hair, he looked pink. The local vets had no clue what was wrong with him. She spent a small fortune on all kinds of drugs and even dog food made from kangaroo meat! When she headed of to grad school at Colorado State, I told her to take the dog to the vet hospital there because they are usually #1 or #2 in the best vet school list. A dermatologist took one look at him and said it was demodex mites. They treated him for it, and he's lived happily ever after -- and is no longer pink!
Those photos are crazy!!!! This rapid of a coat loss is extremely bizarre. I would be shocked if it was from mites.
Did she discuss doing a skin punch biopsy at all? That would rule out a number of things.
Are you near a veterinary teaching hospital by chance? The dermatology department would have a hay day with this!
Tammy
Tammy & Deborah,
Hope you're having a great Monday! The vet came out today and did a skin scraping on Mr. Brown and already called me with the results - no mites or lice. She is just as stumped as we are. I was hoping it would be mites so we'd at least have answers and a straight-forward solution. But didn't get so lucky!
The vet still wants to treat Mr. Brown with injectable ivermectin just in case mites are the issue and they just didn't show up in the scraping, but we've decided to wait a week to see if the hair starts coming in on its own first. If he continues to get worse (although I'm not sure how much worse he can get...) over the next week and there is no hair regrowth we will treat then.
I applied some olive oil to his skin yesterday to sooth the dryness and will continue to do this throughout the week so that he's a little more comfortable. I've included a couple pictures of Mr. Brown from yesterday - as you can see, things are progressing very quickly! Today, especially after wrestling around with him to get the skin scraping, he is almost completely bald. His hair comes off in massive clumps just by lighting touching him. So bizarre. The good news is that he still seems to be in good spirits!
The mystery continues.....
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Looking forward to hearing thoughts from your vet! :)
tammy
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