Finally we are starting to get springlike weather! Getting ready for some shows soon at the end of May. I have a 10 month old doeling I would like to show but I notice that she is losing hair and has scaly skin at the base of the ears and around the eyes. Scaly skin on the neck but not losing hair. I treated her with Ivermectin pour-on about a month ago. No other goats are having this problem. I would have thought that mites would have been killed by the pour on if that was the problem . Also, how could I get the hair to grow back and get rid of the scales pronto before the show? Thanks!
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Started the regiment you suggested today. How long until I see results? Is there any other way he could be getting too much calcium? Our fields don't have any significant amounts of alfalfa. And only the does get the alfalfa hay and cubes in the winter. What should I be feeding my boys? They get shorted when it comes to food, field grasses, hay, tree trimmings in spring, and vegetable scraps. In the winter corn and sweet feed when it is really cold.
I have had a few bucks looks like Christina's buck, and it was zinc deficiency -- or at least it responded to being treated as such. I rubbed sunflower oil on the buck, as well as fed a handful off sunflower seeds every day for a couple of weeks. Eliminating alfalfa from the buck diet pretty much makes it go away. Too much calcium causes zinc deficiency, and alfalfa is high in calcium. It is a safe thing to try.
So I wrote about this 2 years ago and this doe still has the same problem but is more mild now. Same as you, she is the only one in the herd with this. Worse late winter/early spring. I am able to make it better by clipping, bathing and using spray on coat conditioners.
is this the same thing? My buck 3 years old developed the skin condition. No one else has it this skin problem. No visual signs of lice, we did see lice at the end of April and we treated for lice, worms, trimmed feet and copper all at then.
Thanks, I just went out and gave everyone some more BOSS although they had them this morning! I am going to give them measured based on this discussion and see what happens. Have to admit that I haven't kept up recently with their minerals right because I have been building new pens and moving everyone. Going to fix up new mineral holders, up BOSS, do COWP and finish shaving everyone and then pray everything gets straightened back out soon! Plus with all the green starting to grow like crazy with the season change they will get to get out and eat more of that good old yummy God given free food. YA! I personally feel that that always makes them look better! Not to mention making them healthier!
Wow! Glad you found this discussion, Margaret. After reading this, I realize that the bucks are doing okay this year. The boys all have great skin. One started foaming at the mouth, and I made sure that the mineral feeder in his stall was never empty, plus I am giving the sunflower seeds to them. Re-reading my posts on here now, it jumps out at me that I've always given my does sunflower seeds daily because it's supposed to increase butterfat, so that could be another reason that my does never became zinc deficient when my bucks did.
With the amount of sunflower seeds that you'd feed, there isn't a big difference from one Nigerian to another based upon weight.
ok, I have just read this whole discussion and I have to wonder Deb how things have went since this almost 2 years have past with the use of the BOSS? I am having fits with these goats all of a sudden losing hair etc. I know I do a pretty good job of feeding them but still I am having various symptoms. And I know some have lice because I have seen them. So I started shaving this weekend and hope to have everyone BALD (hehe) within the next 2 weeks! Think it is going to rain a lot this week! I have pretty much decided after worming a couple and some other things that this is (other than the lice) a deficiency problem. I feed them quiet a bit of alfalfa and think perhaps they may be suffering from a lack of zinc. So this is why I have to wonder if you still feel that the BOSS will correct this? I have been giving them BOSS, but I don't think I was giving them enough, based on what you said about giving the buck a cup a week. Do you think if they had 1/6 cup a day it would be ok and does it matter what their weight is?
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
I don't know of any reason not to give sunflower seeds to bucks. In fact, I'm going to start doing it myself. In addition to rubbing down that buck last year with sunflower oil, I also started feeding him sunflower seeds because I'd heard it was good for the skin (but didn't know exactly why), but that probably explains why his skin condition totally cleared up.
Here is a link to nutritional info on sunflower seeds:
It says that a cup of sunflower seeds with hulls has 2.3 mg of zinc.
1 cc of MultiMin 90 contains 60 mg zinc, and the vet recommended .5 cc, which is 30 mg zinc for my bucks,
So if a buck consumes a cup of sunflower seeds on a weekly basis (2-3 tablespoons a day), they'll ultimately wind up consuming the same amount of zinc as if I injected them four times a years, which was what the vet recommended, which kind of freaked me out, because it also contains selenium and copper, which could be toxic in high doses, and I know someone who just lost three does after injecting them with MultiMin, so it took me a couple weeks to even get up the nerve to inject my bucks with it.
If you look at the nutritional data for sunflower seeds, they also contain a lot of Vit. E, which is good for your skin. They contain lots of other vitamins and minerals too, including copper and selenium. Keep in mind that you need to look at the weights of the nutrients and not the %DV, which are for humans who consume a 2,000 calorie diet.
And that is what I have read - that's why I was suspicious of mites. and still am - they are still scratching.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
That is annoying that the vet didn't do a skin scraping. At least I got a skin scraping for my $83 back in February when I took my goats to U of I because of their refusing to eat or drink, and one was foaming at the mouth, and one had a funky shedding thing going on. But even then, the vet was adamant that the bucks were not zinc deficient because my does were all fine. Then, a month later when Pegasus was refusing to eat, the vet resident takes one look at his coat and said he was zinc deficient. Ugh! Too much calcium causes zinc deficiency, and my bucks were getting alfalfa hay all winter because we didn't get any grass hay last year. Normally we have our own, but our hay field flooded the day after the hay was cut last year. Anyway, lice are VERY visible to the naked eye, although I do need my reading glasses to see them now. I could see them five or six years ago without my reading glasses. :( And for my $83, I was told that my bucks were just stressed by the cold weather. The only reason I even took them in was because I had just started on a new stack of hay, and I thought it was toxic.
Melissa Johnson said:
ditto on the proper diet - I live in a "mud waller" (Southern speak for mud hole) lol. and they have grass until it stops raining in July and August - and some blackberry bushes and our property was a grass seed field till we bought it - so everything was mowed down and 22 of the 25 acres was flatten for grass seed. So they are pretty dependent on hay and oak bark. I recently read - per a veterinarian - people do fine with goats usually until they start to implement there own concoctions - having said that - wouldnt you think as a normal course of action, the vet I took the goat to would've done a skin scraping without having to be asked??
I kept thinking about it - but he just looked at her skin thoroughly and said with all this skin flakes - it sure looks like she had a heavy infestation of lice - even though I never saw a bug - well, 2. And told me to continue with the horse guard for coat, bathe her again if possible to get all the dead skin off and use the Ivermection pour on again to kill the newly hatched eggs if there were hatchable nits - since it was so hard to get a visual with all the flaky skin..... ?? I didnt ask him to get that scraping - darn it - spent 63.00 bucks - should've gotten something more than looks like this may have been..... ^^
Replies
Started the regiment you suggested today. How long until I see results? Is there any other way he could be getting too much calcium? Our fields don't have any significant amounts of alfalfa. And only the does get the alfalfa hay and cubes in the winter. What should I be feeding my boys? They get shorted when it comes to food, field grasses, hay, tree trimmings in spring, and vegetable scraps. In the winter corn and sweet feed when it is really cold.
Yes, but my problem was less severe.
So I wrote about this 2 years ago and this doe still has the same problem but is more mild now. Same as you, she is the only one in the herd with this. Worse late winter/early spring. I am able to make it better by clipping, bathing and using spray on coat conditioners.
I have seen some of this and would love to know what it is!
is this the same thing? My buck 3 years old developed the skin condition. No one else has it this skin problem. No visual signs of lice, we did see lice at the end of April and we treated for lice, worms, trimmed feet and copper all at then.
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Thanks, I just went out and gave everyone some more BOSS although they had them this morning! I am going to give them measured based on this discussion and see what happens. Have to admit that I haven't kept up recently with their minerals right because I have been building new pens and moving everyone. Going to fix up new mineral holders, up BOSS, do COWP and finish shaving everyone and then pray everything gets straightened back out soon! Plus with all the green starting to grow like crazy with the season change they will get to get out and eat more of that good old yummy God given free food. YA! I personally feel that that always makes them look better! Not to mention making them healthier!
Wow! Glad you found this discussion, Margaret. After reading this, I realize that the bucks are doing okay this year. The boys all have great skin. One started foaming at the mouth, and I made sure that the mineral feeder in his stall was never empty, plus I am giving the sunflower seeds to them. Re-reading my posts on here now, it jumps out at me that I've always given my does sunflower seeds daily because it's supposed to increase butterfat, so that could be another reason that my does never became zinc deficient when my bucks did.
With the amount of sunflower seeds that you'd feed, there isn't a big difference from one Nigerian to another based upon weight.
ok, I have just read this whole discussion and I have to wonder Deb how things have went since this almost 2 years have past with the use of the BOSS? I am having fits with these goats all of a sudden losing hair etc. I know I do a pretty good job of feeding them but still I am having various symptoms. And I know some have lice because I have seen them. So I started shaving this weekend and hope to have everyone BALD (hehe) within the next 2 weeks! Think it is going to rain a lot this week! I have pretty much decided after worming a couple and some other things that this is (other than the lice) a deficiency problem. I feed them quiet a bit of alfalfa and think perhaps they may be suffering from a lack of zinc. So this is why I have to wonder if you still feel that the BOSS will correct this? I have been giving them BOSS, but I don't think I was giving them enough, based on what you said about giving the buck a cup a week. Do you think if they had 1/6 cup a day it would be ok and does it matter what their weight is?
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
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