A few days ago I noticed this lumpy place on Copper's side. The odd thing about it was the location. It was on her right side toward her back leg. I decided to watch it for a few days. My concern was that she is due to kid March 7th and I wondered if this could be a hernia or something that would be affected by her pregnancy or the process of kidding.
After a few days we realized it wasn't going away, in fact the lumps appeared to be getting harder. We didn't want to take any chances, so we called our vet. And since we didn't want to transport her this close to kidding, we asked him to come out. This is a more expensive endeavor, since we have to pay mileage, but we felt it was necessary this time.
When he arrived and examined her, he ruled out any herniation because he could pull the lumps out away from the muscles of her body cavity and surround them with his fingers. Thank goodness. Next, he got out his portable ultra sound. I'm sorry, I didn't get any pictures, I was too busy watching. I did ask his permission to take these pictures. The ultra sound was interesting. He thought the image displayed looked like an abscess so his next step was to see what would happen when he poked it with a syringe. He poked around on it for a while, but couldn't pull anything out of it. But after he took the needle out and squirted the syringe, out came the characteristic pus that comes from an abscess. He wanted to make sure that was what it was before he lanced the lumps.
For some of the other abscesses our goat occasionally get, we usually let them come to a head and start to crack open on their own. This is shown in another post here. This time, due to the location and the timing of Copper's pregnancy, we wanted these abscesses, there were two right next to each other, dealt with now so they could heal before she goes into labor. We felt she had gotten into some of the thorny bushes we have growing around here and poked herself a couple of times, causing these abscesses.
She wasn't real happy about this process. We put her up on the milk stand to make it easier for us to work and to distract her with a little grain. First the doc swabbed her side with alcohol swabs and iodine scrub, which is about 3% strength.
Then he lanced the abscesses open and began to squeeze out the pus.
He continued to work on them until he felt like he had most of the pus out.
Then he used a hemostat to pull out some of the skin that formed the pocket around the abscess. He called this the plug and described it as the skin that encases the abscess, walling it off from the tissue around it. He said if you can puncture, or pull out this plug then the body is able to quickly heal itself. After he finished cleaning out the abscess he infused it with a cephalosporin antibiotic, gave Copper an antibiotic shot and a shot to deal with pain and swelling, insuring me that none of this would harm her babies.
We consider this another investment in our learning process. I told Frank, sometimes you have to pay to go to school. This was one of those cases. And, of course, while the vet was here we had a nice visit about a variety of other things that we can add to our arsenal of knowledge. Every little bit helps and you never know when it will come in handy. Take advantage of every learning opportunity that comes your way, even if it involves pus and scalpels. Sometimes these lessons present themselves in unexpected ways. Learn all you can, everyday, in every way.
Until next time - Fern
If you have livestock, sooner or later one of them is going to poke something into their neck, chest or shoulder when they are trying to
reach that one thing to eat that is just beyond their
reach. Then after a week or so you notice a lump growing on them.
We
have some barbed wire on our fence braces....
some nasty, very thorny plants......these really sting when they poke you too
and lots and lots of briers........so the opportunities to create abscesses are many.
The first time this happened to us we got out our trusty goat books and looked up abscesses. What we read scared us to death. Caseous Lymphadenitis or CL is a very contagious condition among goat herds that causes abscesses. We were in the midst of selling some of our does and had taken a deposit on this doe. She would be leaving in a month after her kids were weaned. So we waited a few more weeks for her to recover fully from birthing then loaded her up and went to the vet. He lanced the abscess, cleaned it out and warned us about the contagious nature of CL. Because we didn't want this highly contagious problem spreading among our herd, and we were selling this goat, we had the vet send off a sample for testing to eliminate the possibility of CL. Thankfully, the test came back negative. Needless to say, this was quite a learning experience.
We have since had a few abscesses each year. The vet and my books indicate that abscesses are usually just the result of being poked by something and introducing bacteria under the skin. Our buck, Teddy, recently starting limping and then carrying his back foot. This had happened before with other animals, but they quickly recovered. He didn't. We looked at his foot over and over and couldn't find anything. We finally took him to the vet who found an abscess up in his foot between his 'toes'. A shot of antibiotics and he is good as new. Another good learning experience.
All of this leads up to the latest abscess on Ivory's
jaw. If you do not want to see a really yucky pictorial of treating an
abscess, please read no further. I wanted to post this because of the
great worry our first experience gave us. This doesn't mean an abscess
on your animal might not be a very serious problem, but it may be just
an abscess that can be treated and heal up with no problems.
When our goats get an abscess, we leave it alone and let it 'grow' and come to a head of sorts, until the skin on the outside kind of dies.
The hair will fall out, then the skin will crack, sort of like very dry
skin. I do not interfere with it until then. I want to make sure it
has encased itself and the blood flow is minimal, especially if the abscess is in the neck area. There are many important vessels in the neck area, and I don't want to inadvertently injure something.
When the skin starts to crack I get several paper towels and squeeze.
This will usually cause the crack to widen and allows the pus to be forced out.
This is the really gross part.
I squeeze all of the pus out I can then fill a 3cc syringe with strong 7% Iodine and flush out the abscess.
I have never met a goat yet that cares for this procedure at all. You have to be very firm and quick.
Next I pack the abscess with generic triple antibiotic ointment.
This will normally do it. I keep a close eye on it to
make sure it is healing well. It helps that I am milking Ivory and will
be able to check it each day when she is on the milk stand. I may
squeeze it out again if there appears to be more pus, otherwise it
should heal up nicely in a few weeks.
She is ready to eat and be milked, and happy for me to leave her neck alone.
The udder wash with iodine is a great way to disinfect our hands when we need it. We have changed over to this empty soap bottle with a pump on it. It is a great dispenser.
I hope this helps anyone else that runs into abscesses in their animals. We were very alarmed when we first had to deal with them, so we wanted to alleviate others concern when it was their turn. If you have further concerns, contact your veterinarian.
Until next time - Fern
