Animal Health

Caring for the Herd

Holistic veterinary care requires attention to the most subtle of signs and symptoms in your herd, along with an awareness of all the available strategies and tools for treatment. It requires the farmer to move from a medication-based mindset, towards treating the whole animal; looking for underlying causes and not just chasing symptoms.

This is one of the reasons why we keep a ‘Formulations Book’, not a ‘Disease Manual’. We want our staff to be thinking more about signs and symptoms, observing how the goat is presenting, rather than some clinical diagnosis of what might be wrong. By observing key signs in that specific animal, we better understand what might be happening and treat her, rather than the generic goat.

The key is early recognition.

We’ve developed a list of signs and symptoms a set of diagnostic tools – see below – to help work out what might be wrong with a goat. We use this, along with our Formulations Book to provide focused treatment for her.

We’ll cover some of the health issues that these signs and tools may be indicative of in our blogs and these pages. But this information in no way should replace your own veterinarian advice and support, nor your own research and understanding in your specific case.

Goat Observations, signs and symptoms

- Fluffy face
- Fluffy coat/hairs on end
- Sunken eyes
- Ears down
- Yawning, teeth grinding (pain)
- Limping
- Hot hoof
- Eye closed
- Streaming eye
- Snotty/runny nose
- Scours
- Bloody Scours
- Pale gums
- Pale eye lids
- Udder swollen
- Udder hot
- Lymph glands swollen
- Lump in udder
- Lumps in teat
- Thickening in udder
- Thickening in teat
- Discharge vulva
- High Heart Rate ~70bpm
- Low Temperature <38.6 degrees C
- High temperature >40.6 degrees C
- Not eating
- Not eating all of concentrate
- Lump in jaw throat
- Sudden drop in milk
- Clots in milk
- Not in normal place on the line up
- Bloat