Pretty much lost it...
 

No, not my mind. That was gone a long time ago!

I think we've lost half of Muffin's udder.

I go out there, I milk it, I work it for all I'm worth, but I maybe get a cup a day (max) out of that left side. It feels hard, and I'm thinking it's pretty much scarred.

Do I keep on milking and working that side? I'm still getting about a half gallon in the morning and a pint or so in the evening from the "good" side (the kids are on her all day).

Thanks for any input, confirmation, affirmation, or friendly comments. :)

I don't have any advice, but I am sorry you and your doe are still going through this. I do hope you haven't lost that side ocmpletely.

I have one doe that only has one functioning side. She produces about 3/4 of what she did with a fully functioning udder, and I'm ok with that. I think her udder got kicked by a calf when she got into his pen. Many goats do fine with only half an udder, so unless you are planning on showing, requiring a perfect udder, she'll still make a nice dairy goat.

Thank, OBF. <shrug> One of those little Growth Opportunities... :rolleyes:

Of course, this doe won't be bred again. Perhaps if that side had been functional, but honestly, she has these enormous honking bulbous teats, and I don't feel confident enough in my breeding to breed away from that.

I'll keep the doelings, see if their sire threw the good udders of his line into them and of course use them for milk, but Muffin's days are numbered. :shrug:

Life with livestock. Sometimes it's a blast, other times, well... AFGO.

If you have not treated her, take a clean sample and send it off to the state lab - they usually do it for free- and if you can wait till the results to come back before you treat, you may be able to help her function. In any case, one time a year is when we have a chance to cure mastitis- at the dry off. tomorrow usually works very well- we have double treated in the past: milk her out and treat, then milk out a second day and treat again, but leave it in. Depending on what organism, you may be able to do a series of injections and then consider Vit. C and find out what her copper status is- copper helps tremendously with mastitis problems.

Didn't see your response Farmmom - sorry!

What do you do with the half that's not producing as much? Do you keep milking it out? As I mentioned, there's next to nothing coming out of the one udder, while the other is quite abundantly producing.

I've treated her a few times already: Injectable antibiotics (LA200 and Noricillin), and amoximast intra-teat treatment.

Maybe one more try, after getting lab results.

She could probably use a copper bolus - but I'll have to check my records to see if bolused her when we got her. Probably not, as we weren't sure how far along she was at the time.

I've been giving both does Vit C (powder on pear slices), as well as Vit B.

Try adding dolomite to her regimen. Make her take two heaping teaspoons twice a day along with the vitamin C.

Dolomite?

Two heaping teaspoons?

I already have to dust the C on to pear pieces... I don't know how I'd get 2 tsps of dolomite powder into this gal, but I'm open for suggestions.

Your goats are nice and do what you want, don't they? :teehee:

I have a one teated goat, and she does just fine. Raised twin bucklings this year and still made milk for the house. She's herd queen, so apparently having both halves of an udder isn't a status symbol.:D

Also, my LaMancha that has been throwing clumps has had three milkings without clumps, which means she will *probably* have clumps in this evening's milk. Sigh. I shipped a sample to LSU's mastitis clinic today.

The bulbous teat issue on Muffin would be enough for me to take her out of the milk string. I had one of those and sold her quickly to someone who didn't mind.

I don't have any advice Pony but wanted to send Hugs your way! I know how frustrating it is when you have something wrong with one of your animals, wether it's livestock or a house pet & you do everything you can & it still doesn't seem to be working.

I leave the dolomite in the grain pan so the girls get some with each milking. If they want more, they will lick the stuff out of the pan. Try wetting her grain and sprinkle the dolomite onto the damp grain and stir it around to coat the grains.

I also have a one sided doe. She was accidently bred and she gave birth to triplets. I figured I would have to bottle raise. That girl has done a wonderful job. I have a buck and two beautiful does now.

Can't offer any more advice, but am sending a hug your way Pony. No one could have worked harder than you did for Muffin. The fact that half her udder is still producing well is down to your loving care.

YES!!
A couple of years ago, my dear friend came home from the livestock auction in tears. She knew it was a bad idea and that she'd probably just laid out money so this poor goat could die loved .. but the goat had looked at her and asked for help.

Big Sanaan, huge teats.
One side of the udder was hard as a rock, the other side was cold. Dairy farmer down the road said he'd never, ever seen mastitis that bad and he didn't know what to do besides put her down.

Well, we tied her down at least 3 times a day to milk and strip and rub and massage. We got blood and pus from the hard side and an evil kind of ooze from the cold side. We gave penicillin injections and good feed.

The cold side turned black and fell off. It was horrible. We kept tying her down to work the other side. We'd scratch her and love on her, ease her down, tie her legs and take turns loving her up and comforting her while the other did the nasty, painful job of massaging and milking out pus.

After a couple of weeks the hard side was soft and the milk started to be milk and stink less and less.

After a few weeks more she was madly in love with my friend (I was always the one with the needle so she never liked me as much) and would stand to be milked. And it was milk. About a pint and a half a day. Dairy farmer said he never would have believed it. We kept giving penicillin injections till a week after we thought she didn't need them.

A year later she had healthy twins, fed them and gave a half a gallon or more for the table. So it was a lot of work, a labor of love, but it can be done. We were total goat newbies and I don't know if that helped or hurt (ie: the fool didn't know that it couldn't be done...)

Ah. Thanks for explaining that. Having no experience with dolomite, I thought it would be the battle of "Pony! vs Muffin the Stubborn Goat" and I always lose those...

Otter: WOW! What a story! I would have put that girl down myself. No time to do a lot of life-saving measures like that single-handed, but that is pretty impressive.

OLF, Backfourty, EVERYONE: Thanks. :)

Alice: When do you get the lab results back from LSU?

It takes about a week. They have to grow the culture, then do another test if something grows in order to see which antibiotic works on that specific bacteria.

I almost hate to say this, but we haven't had clumps in four milkings.

i would keep up what you have been doing, its not going to HURT anything, and i would breed her back again for next season, there is always the outside chance that side will act just fine the next time. and besides even if it doesnt she will still have the one good side that produces a 1/2 gall. or more,

anything is possible,

One other thing to consider is the hay being fed/eaten.

I learned the hard way that endophyte-infested hay (most native grasses have it upon maturity) will put lumps into udders. When I stopped letting them eat that type of hay, the lumps totally disappeared, though it took about a year.

If the trouble IS scar tissue that is blocking the teat duct, then there isn't much that can be done. I have a doe with two perfectly functioning halves of the udder - but one teat is blocked with scar tissue. I can get a few drops out of that side, tops. Kids suckling don't do much better. Every year that side bags up, then dries up normally. The other side does best feeding just one kid, I've found. She's a miniature of mostly pygmy descent, so she is not a dairy breed. She raised two bucklings on that side but they were smaller than the rest of the bucklings - though they WERE quads, which means they were MUCH smaller than the rest of the twin/triplet kids at birth anyways...

She can be a perfectly useable doe, but I would suggest keepng 2-3 replacement doe kids from her and then cull her. If you don't like her anyways and she doesn't have a bunch of redeeming factors, there's no reason to keep her around. That way, you can freshen her daughters and see which is the best doe, keep her, and sell the rest.

I'm leaning toward culling.

Her teats are pretty crummy, I don't think I'll ever get her hooves to where she'll be able to stand comfortably, and while she's an attentive mother, I'm having to return all the milk I'm taking out of her plus lots more.

Is that normal?

We picked up two gallons of milk at the store on Saturday. Those are now gone, in addition to ALL the milk we've taken from Muffin, and about half the milk Trub has given us. So three kids are going through more than a gallon a day PLUS they're on her all day.

I don't know what the math is supposed to be on that, but I'm not getting much goat milk, and at $4 a gallon, my budget isn't any too happy either.

Although it's difficult, I vote cull also.

Did I miss the back story? How did you end up with this particular doe, Pony? Along with the others, I offer sympathy and encouragement for all your hard work and your obvious love for your critters.

Yeah. Oh, How I Love Growth Opportunities...



... not really. <sigh>

So, now I have to figure if feeding/milking the doe is a matter of diminishing returns....

Which of course it probably is. Oh, well. So much for the grand plan of milk all Winter. Already fed ALL of the frozen I had stashed to the kids.

Hope those doelings take after their sire and have better udders than their mama. One of them certainly has Ringo's legs - that doeling looks more like a fawn than a kid!

We picked her up last Summer. She's a Snubian. A fella had gotten into goats big time, but was selling off all his stock (his foundation was from Goddard). I think he went gonzo on growing does with huge udders, but didn't pay attention to things like bulbous teats and the like.

She was a really decent price, and was pregnant. He said (and I have no reason to doubt him) that she was a great milker, and the sire had good milky lines. CAE negative, and I pulled blood for a CAE test and sent it to Biotracking to make double sure she was negative before I brought her home to our little herd.

She had/has seriously overgrown hooves, and now this whole thing with her udder... One side is ginormous, the other is very small and not doing well at all. We were getting about half a gallon a day off the one side, but now that seems to be down too.

The kids are on her, but I'm still going through two gallons of milk in addition to all the milk I'm getting from both does every couple or three days.

I'm tired. She's tired. She's sore. I know that the right thing is to cull.

Pony, I've never had a goat with mastitis yet & God help me that I never do but I never thought I'd go through some of the things I have with my goats. I really commend you, your doing a fantastic job & everything you possibly can. Poor Muffin would probly not still be here if she were at someone else's farm.

Yeah, and now I'm feeling like a crum-bum because maybe I should not have held on to her for so long.

OTOH, she's still eating and drinking and stuff... I know her hooves hurt, but she's ...

Ack.

Second-guessing myself isn't going to help.

I'd better go check the clearing time for all the medications I shot into her.

Pony, doubtless anyone sane would have shot that goat, but I can't recall ever claiming sanity...

Anyhoo, it sounds like your big money drain is feeding the kids. Are they old enough to wean? (I haven't looked up posts for the back story)
Also, are her teats really bulbous or are they blown? I could be wrong here, but bulbous means her doe kids may inherit that and blown means guy-who-was-gonzo-for-huge-udders didn't milk her out and let the poor girl swell up with milk until her poor parts were stretched permanently out of whack and her daughters will be fine.
(because I knew a whackadoo with cows who thought they'd produce more the second year if he let the milk "stretch" them out the first - poor girls!!)
That would weigh into my decision to cull - whether or not she'd have daughters with huge, ungainly teats or daughters who'd produce so heavily that they needed to be milked regularly.

Please don't feel crummy for holding onto her. I have had mastitis personally and if she's "eating and drinking and stuff" then she's not so miserable that death would be blessed relief - not that mastitis can't get that bad because it can.

And please don't feel crummy if you decide to cull her. You've done a lot more for her then most would have and culling her is way, waaay kinder then sending her down the road to take her chances. There is a limit to what you can do and you're the one who knows it and you shouldn't feel bad for reaching it. Goats are livestock, it's not like a dog you could rehome (and sometimes it's better to P them TS as well, heaven knows)
<<hugs>> to help you get through your decision.

Otter makes a good point - there is a difference between BLOWN teats (which is damage) and just large teats due to genetics. I had a doe with a blown half of her udder. It wasn't the prettiest udder but it wasn't BAD - and she gave 14lbs per day at her peak. :) The one side had blown from her super high production and her less-than perfect previous owner didn't milk that side, when her single buckling as a FF would only nurse one side. But, USUALLY this only happens to ONE side, so if they're even and large teated, it IS likely genetic.

Even though it seems silly to be buying milk for diary goat kids, DON'T be tempted to wean them early - at LEAST 3 months on milk, if not 4 or 5. This is my first year feeding out a kid till 5 months of age, and she's doing just GREAT on it, I'll likely always raise replacement doelings until at least 4-5 months of age on milk from now on.

Hey Pony
One thing I have found people will say anything to sell a goat they don't need.
My Sugar I am now milking out one side (the side that got engorged early on) the other side I milk every other day, just get a bit I dont like the idea of milk sitting in there. When I cut back that side dried up the other kept going, so yeah I have a doe that has a funny looking udder.

Andi, you are SO right. I talked to someone who got a couple does from the same seller shortly after I did (she was trying to help them out). Turns out that she's having similar problems.

MyGoat and Otter: Is there any way to tell the difference between a blown teat and a bulbous teat?

And even though it's going to end up blowing the budget, I'd never skimp on feeding the kids. As Emily says, "The more milk you can get into them, the better!"

A friend knows an Amish farmer up across the border who may sell me milk for the kids. Won't be able to contact her until Monday, though.

My experience is with cows, but with them if the teats are deformed from genetics it will be pretty even, front are always shorter then back, but both back ones will be huge, or both front ones will point inward, etc.
If it's environmental, it will be uneven. They get mastitis in one quarter and it warps, a calf will only suckle the front or the left and the other teats get "blown" and the udder will be uneven.

Also, in cows and actually with my own experience, if you have a baby that favors one side or one teat, when the next baby comes the favored side will engorge more quickly, making harder for a newborn to suckle, so they will favor the other side, so you have the side that is geared up to produce more not getting milked out and you run into problems. It's one more reason that lots of dairy farmers hate letting calves suck even for a day or two is because it "unbalances" the cow.

But again, my experience is with cows and goats may be different in the way their udders respond. I think it would be the same, but I can't say I know for sure.

If it's injury, it likely won't be the same on both sides. It often happens when people leave kids on a doe but don't keep an eye on her udder. The kids nurse one side mostly or exclusively, and the other side swells and stretches farther than the other.

Here's my doe whose udder was damaged when her single buck kid nursed only her left half. The other side bagged up excessively.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j1...s/DSC08317.jpg