feet trouble

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I just read the post above mine on hoof rot and i have a few questions of my own - and i am going to take you thru her history so maybe you can help clear up my confusion. I am still relatively new to goats and have never had this problem before. 2 year old doe - gemini - we bought her when she was a yearling. her feet looked like knarled ski's of some sort. we got her home and didn't have any problem with her at all, got her feet trimmed up and in a few months they were looking almost normal. After she kidded i noticed that she started to limp on her front leg, upon inspection there was absoulutely nothing that i could see so i thought maybe she twisted it and i decided to give her a few days and see what i see. well a week later she is still limping and i begin to notice this god awful oder when i milked her. smelled like rotten flesh, so i look her over real good, trying to figure out what the smell is and where is it coming from.. couldn't find anything at all, but when i picked up her feet, i knew that was the source of the smell. went in and got a bucket of hot water and washed her feet real good so i could see better and i STILL couldn't see what the heck was wrong. so i called the vet, she came out and told me that "it" was bec her feet had not touched the ground in so long, that she had an infection in between her toes. told me to give her pennicilian 6cc for three days and soak her foot in epsom salt. She also tells me that she will have to heal this from the inside out. we did the three days of shots and i soaked her foot twice a day for 5 days, odor was gone and she was no longer limping. few days later the odor is back and she's limping again! so i call the vet back and tell is it isn't working, can we try something else? she tells me to put her back on pennicillan for seven more day, thats where we are now, today is the fifth day. no odor and no limping. What i don't understand, is is this foot rot? the vet would NOT say that it was, and she woulsn't say that it wasn't. all she would say was that it came from not having her feet on the ground in so long. i bought her a year ago!! since then her feet have been trimmed regularly - as a matter of fact the first person to trim her was a man who has raised goats and sheep for 30 years - her feet were in such bad shape i didn'tknow how to correct that so i took her to him so he could show me how far i could go down tc..so i know her feet have been in good shape for a year. so why did this happen to her now?? I also asked the vet if i should separate her from the others and she said she saw no reason to. No one else has this problem. It has been unusually wet this spring so in the first stall where they always come in the barn i have a pretty good layer of lime down that they have to walk thru in order to get to the hay and grain. I just don't know what this is, if it's hoof rot why did she get it now? why did the vet not tell me to separate? will the pennicillan help her ( it didn't the first time ) her hoof is in good shape, strong and well trimmed. and when the vet separated her toes for me to see, i smelled but really didn't see anything, certainly nothing that would have produced an odor like that. Anyone have any answers for me??? And can she heal from this? That was something else the vet wouldn't/couldnt tell me.

-- Susan (dsowen@tds.net), May 06, 2002

Answers

We had a similar problem with a calf. Put 7% iodine between his toes 2x a day for 2 or 3 days and it dried right up. It was so bad the calf was lame also. Just make sure you work the toes so the iodine gets down in between there good.

-- Paula (chip89@edgenet.com), May 06, 2002.

Can goats get thrush? Sounds like symptoms a horse of mine had once that was thrush. At any rate, the iodine idea is a good one. Let us know if this works.

-- (moonspinner@bluefrognet.net), May 08, 2002.

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