Hello there. Looking for some answers in a few different areas:
1. How long should kids be given grain? Ours are 9 months old, and I'm still giving them 1/2 cup of grain once a day. Both are does, and both are completely healthy and sassy. They also get grass hay and loose mineral.
2. What's your take on Vitamin B complex? If I administer it, how many cc? We've got two wethers (3 years old), one pregnant doe (4 years old), and two doe kids (9 mo. old). I've heard it's a good "booster", especially in winter.
3. Our pregnant doe's joints (at least I think it's her joints) make "cracking" sounds quite often when she is walking. It sounds much like a human cracking his/her knuckles. What might that be a sign of, and should I do something about it?
That's all for now... thanks a bunch!!!
Jabe
Replies
BoSe is not a vaccine. It's a selenium and vitamin E supplement, and you really should not use it if your goats don't need it. Symptoms of selenium deficiency are muscle and fertility problems. Also using injectable selenium is not a good long-term nutritional plan. Here is a quote from a post I did a few years ago after attending a session on selenium at the ADGA conference:
He is not the first person I've heard say that you should not supplement by injection. After hearing his talk, however, I switched to a free-choice selenium and E supplement that I buy from Caprine Supply.
As for CDT vaccine, I quit doing them after owning goats for about three years, and I've never regretted my decision. But that's a personal decision for everyone to make. It supposedly protects against enterotoxemia types C & D and tetanus, but I knew people who wound up with enterotoxemia, even though they had vaccinated, including someone who had just vaccinated a goat two weeks earlier, so I decided the risk of the vaccine was greater than the benefit. But others may feel differently.
Thanks Patty and Deborah. Question for Deborah: what is your take on CD-T and Bose? Those are currently the vaccinations I administer to my goats. Would you advise against them as well? Thanks!
The reason CAE can cause creaky joints is because the A stands for arthritis. However, a goat can have arthritis without having CAE. As far as I know there isn't any research on glucosamine and chondroitin in goats, but I take it for my arthritis, and I used to give it to my little bichon when she was 15, and there are even horse formulations, so it might help goats with arthritis, whatever the cause. However, if you goat has CAE, that's a whole different problem!
As for B vitamins, I don't give my goats anything that they don't need. There is a risk with everything you do, and I'd personally feel terrible if I hit a nerve with the needle and crippled a goat or something like that. And you never know when an animal is going to have a reaction to something, especially when injected. I almost had a cat die from a vaccine years ago when we still lived in the city, and that's always in the back of my head. She would have died if she hadn't been at the vet's. If your goats have a problem, then you need to address that problem directly. Simply throwing supplements at a goat because someone else does it could wind up causing problems. I know two people who wound up killing goats accidentally because they gave them MultiMin simply because they knew other breeders were doing it, so they thought they should also.
Ditto on what Patty said about the grain.
1) You can wean the 9 month olds from the grain at any time. I usually stop giving grain around 5 to 6 months. Some people wait longer, around 9 months.
2) I don't know. ;)
3) From my experience, some goats are just more creaky than others. My oldest doe is a bit creaky. One of my friends who breeds Nubians got a new buck once and then found out that he had VERY creaky joints. She had him tested for CAE right away, as it can be a symptom. He tested negative for CAE as well as all the other commonly tested for diseases, so I guess he was just creaky. It didn't seem to bother him. There may be other things that can cause creaky joints too, but I don't know what they might be.