I found her this morning with a gash in the middle of her side. It's fairly shallow, but as long as my thumb and somewhat wider. All the skin is gone, so it's open.
I have no idea what happened. Everybody else is fine.
Called my husband at work and he said that in his experience with livestock on pasture, he's seen fewer infections with this type of injury just left open to heal, rather than getting it stitched. I didn't know if this one even could be stitched. But I don't want her to get infected either way...
The hair kind of covers the right hand side and the top of it.
I have a first aid critter wound spray that I could spray on it, but the bottle says "protective dressing for minor cuts, skin irritations, and abrasions" and "for external use only, not for deep puncture wounds", etc. This looks like more than a minor cut to me. Should I spray it? Or is there something else I should do or put on it??
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Thanks!!
So far, it's stayed surprisingly clean. Nothing that looks like eggs, and I haven't seen many flies on it either. Whew. But I'll definitely keep checking.
The eggs look like little bits of rice or pasta. They are very easy to see.
Thank goodness. I was a little freaked out. But checking wound, me can do. What do the eggs look like? Just to know.
Luckily she isn't milking or raising babies right now.
Think I'll check out that Shaklee stuff. Next road trip maybe we can plan to drive past a distributor.
You would have to get Basic H from a Shaklee distributor. You can check the Shaklee website and see if there is someone near you.
There is really no reason to get freaked out by the possibility of fly strike. If you just check the wound several times a day you can pick off any eggs. They are easy to see.
They also sell "screw worm spray," such as Catron, but I really hate that stuff because I used it once on a turkey, and as the maggots died and fell off, her babies ate them, and then of course, they all died because it's poison. I personally would not want to use it on a milk goat. I'm sure it has not been tested in milk goats in terms of whether it gets into the milk and how long it takes to no longer be in the milk.
WOW...where can I get this Basic H??
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
My daughter did an experiment with raw chicken meat five years ago and happens to be home this weekend. She has her notes on her flash drive, so here is what we learned.
She put three pieces of chicken in a wire rabbit cage so flies could get to it but an animal couldn't eat it. One piece of raw chicken had nothing on it, one piece had DE sprinkled on it, and one piece was sprayed with diluted Basic H. Within 24 hours, the piece with nothing had maggots on it. Both the DE and Basic H had a few fly eggs on it, and she sprayed the Basic H again. At 48 hours, the fly eggs had not hatched on the DE or Basic H chicken. She sprayed it with Basic H again. We have no idea what happened by day 3 because something broke into the cage and ate the chicken meat. The dilution of Basic H was 4 parts water, 1 part Basic H.
We had coyotes rip off a 4" X 6" piece of skin for the hind leg of a sheep, and he survived, so compared to that, this ain't nothing. :)
Fly strike is gross, but it won't kill an adult. If you can bring her inside for a day or two, that would be ideal, but that is not usually possible with adults. Otherwise, you can spray it with diluted Shaklee Basic H, and that will keep the flies off.
If you do spray it, I'd make sure to get it under any areas covered by a flap of hide too.
I'm under the impression that spraying it with some type of a drying wound coating, like blue-kote, would make it an environment that flies wouldn't be attracted to. I don't really have enough experience with things like that though, so I'd do whatever Deborah says. ;)
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