Why do you give shots?

I am careful about who gets what shot. Rabies, yes. Tetanus I have done but I always drag it out. I have no idea how you could clean a nail hole out enough to kill microscopic bacteria without damaging the body or using a chemical that dehydrates the tissues (like peroxide).

Why are goats any different than other mammals?

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Just because something bad is natural, doesn't mean it requires something unnatural to get rid of it. Fire is natural and water works great.

By the same token, there are plenty of bad artificial things too. It really has no bearing.

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Because of these 41 years I have lived I have seen livestock die of tetanus, blackleg in cattle and Clostridium perfringens in goats, rabies, parvo in dogs. Have had aborted calves due to vibrio and lepto. After losing four, five to six hundred pound calves, to blackleg five or six years back I will vaccinate. To me it's just insurance. You may never experience a fire, but

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I do it as a precaution, only CD&T though. I do not feel the need to give them rabies since they would only contract it by being bitten by a rabid animal and that would be a whole separate issue.

I do it since goats are pigs and can get over eating disease since they feel the need to put so many things in their mouths, they rub up against everything and can get a splinter I do not see or know about and get tetnus etc.

All goats before they leave get a CD&T shot since I have no clue what they have on or at their place. I would hate for a goat to get sick soon after I sold it.

I do not overuse antibiotic, in that case I do not want them to build a resistance. I have gone "in" so many does during labor and I have never had a problem with it. Nor do I give it to them anytime they seem down or have the sniffles or something. I watch and take temps.

I am considering giving the milking does Lysign, after I do more research on it.

CD&T to me is a a tool I use to be on the safe side which is also why I test my goats for CAE. I do not want to be sorry somewhere down the line because I did not do an $8 test or give what amounts to a .50 cent shot.

But this like our feeding methods is to each their own. If you do not want to vaccinate for your own personal reasons it is your choice.

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I guess if you want to take the chance with your goats , their health & their lives it's like thaiblue12 said, it's each individuals choice.

BUT when you loose a goat you dearly love becuase you didn't give a .50 cent shot once a year then you'll wish you had.

Like my vet said I may never have the same problem again in 30 more years but Clostridial perifrigens are in EVERYBODIES soil & it is not worth it to me to take that chance.

I do not over medicate & don't do any other vaccinations or give antibiotics just to give antibiotics but I do the CD & T vaccine, try & make sure everyone has the right stuff to eat, baking soda & good loose mineral & are free of external & internal parasites.

I vaccinate twice a year with Covexin 8 which gets several of the Clostridum Perfringens as well as Clostridium Sordelli and Tetanus. Why? Clostridium kills and kills quickly. Once a goat is symptomatic, it is very difficult to save it. Prevention is much more effective than treatment with this disease. I used to use a CD&T, but then leased a buck to a friend, and he was fine one night and dead the next morning. Clostridium Sordelli was cultured, so I went to a vaccine that included that organism.

With young kids I will give them CD & T antitoxin at disbudding, and their first Covexin 8 at tattooing, followed by a booster a few weeks later.

I also vaccinate with Lysigin because I would rather prevent staph mastitis than treat with antibiotics.

I keep antibiotics, banamine, thiamine, Bo-Se and other injectables for use in treatment of disease or metabolic disorders. I do not give these on a regular basis (other than Bo-Se), but find them essential parts of my medical cabinet.

I vaccinate with CD&T only, and my adult goats get it every-other year. Almost lost Cayenne to over-eaters, and the treatment was expensive and her aftercare was exhausting for me. She also just had a horrible wound on her chest that I didn't notice for at least 2 days because of it's location and her stand-offish nature. Had she not had her Tetanus on-board, I would have taken her to the vet immidiately. As it was, I was confident that Tetanus wasn't a worry, and so was able to treat her myself at home.

I would mourn and cry to lose my goats; a simple shot reduces a few reasons why I might lose them.....

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I can relate to both sides...I used to be a somewhat anti (not so much against as just not really thinking it was needed).. A couple of things made me look at it differently.
1. We bought cattle that were infected with a disease that's easily prevented with a vaccine. I know that this is "buyer beware" but there were carriers that were not showing symptoms (still infectious). We ended up exposing the rest of our cattle (not vaccinated), losing several cows, aborting calves and calves born with defects. All of which could have been prevented had our herd been vaccinated. We are still dealing with the effects of this years later.
2. We started raising registered animals. The pigs that we raise are a rare breed and prices for them start at 350.00 for a weanling. We have a closed herd so I am not really worried about them getting sick at our farm but I dont know what they are going to be exposed to when they leave our place. I would feel terrible if I sold someone a 350.00 pig that they took home and lost to something that I could have helped to protect against. Same with our goats.

I guess that I am a bit confused though that you don't seem to have an issue with vaccines in general, as you state that you give them to your other animals. If you feel that they are needed for those animals, why not for your goats?

I give my kids CD and T and cocci prevention because all are prevalent in this wet-spring environment. Same with lambs. Adults get CDT and BoSE boosters a month before kidding and kids/lambs selenium paste the day they are born, very selenium deficient, and although I provide minerals, can't be sure they use them. Does get wormed the day they kid. I don't think the goat kids will be at as much risk this year as none are due until first week of June, does have been out on good pasture and the pens are dry - I'll still vaccinate. I know that people who don't vaccinate lose kids/lambs and then sayd "I don't know what killed them" - probably entero and/or cocci. It's much easier to prevent disease than treat it.

I don't do coccidia prevention because I feel that limited exposure to coccidia will strengthen the immune response and help them over the course of their lifetime. I do treat if they are symptomatic for coccidia. Coccidia is very treatable, as opposed to Clostridium spp. which is easy to prevent, difficult to treat.

I do CD/T because it's cheap and good prevention. You can raise animals for a long time and get "lucky" with no issues, but all it takes is losing one good animal for you to realize a once yearly vaccine is a simple solution.

All ours get CDT. Ours is an old old place with Lord knows what dumped in the blackberry bushes besides rusty wire & broken glass that comes to the surface. Though goats arent back there I can still dig up places where previous owners buried non biodegradable trash.
Im not losing goats to clostridium, entero, tetanus, worms or anything I can prevent with vacs.
Meds are used when needed but none of the ones slated for freezer get anything.

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I had a friend that felt as you do, I tried to tell her the dangers (cocci, worms, tetanus, enterotoxemia, ect.), honestly she just didn't have enough experience to realize that I was serious and goats go down QUICK. She lost her yearling within a 12 hour period and one of her milkers also went down. We were able to save the milker (hundreds of dollars later and maybe permanent rumen damage).

I practice preventative medicine because having livestock is expensive enough. Preventive shots and doing fecals regularly not only allows me to have live healthy animals but also to have thrifty animals. Less vet bills, easier keepers (no reason to feed parasites, my feed bill is high enough), regularly having triplet births, high milk supply, less replacement costs due to death, these are just a few of the reasons why I have a good preventative program in place. Plus it makes me happier to have happy healthy animals.

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But once it gets to the point of treatment, you have lost growth and have scarring.

Corid only kills one stage of cocci, so they build immunity well on it. Even sulfa's they still build immunity as there is no way you keep cocci at zero all the time.

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Another consideration is the fact that a vaccine is also not a guarantee.

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The 7th Day is still God's Sabbath
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Layton Hollow ADGA Nubians
Taking Reservation for 2015!

CDT for all the same reasons as the above posts...I also vaccinate for pneumonia now because of the experiences I have seen on this forum of goats getting pneumonia and dieing so quickly. It's a cheap and easy shot and I would feel so awful if one of mine died from that and a simple vaccination could have prevented it.
I don't do rabies on the goats because there is no goat rabies vaccine available.
I also did titer test on my dog since he was about 7 and never needed to vaccinate since then and he will be 18 in August if he makes it. I quit the titer when he was around 12.

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a bit off topic, but I just got the results of my chickenpox titer....I'm not immune nor have I ever been in contact with it at the age of 36! My doctor is distraught; he says chicken pox at my age can be deadly and has special-ordered the vaccine for me...

It will be a relief to know I'm more protected now that I *know* I have simply been lucky all these years....

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...'o shame on the mothers of mortals, who have not stopped to teach; of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes; the sorrow that has no speech... from -'Voice of the Voicless', Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I don't think they are, really. I am trying to figure out why I am hesitant to give my goats (and only goats) shots. I have no basis for feeling this way other than I just do.....

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You don't think you need them until you have a goat come down with Clostridium perfringins or tetanus - antitoxin goes out of date and the Clostridium perfringins antitoxin is hard to find.

Goats love to get sick, get hurt and I would much rather give the CDT than worry if my goat has Clostridium perfringins or tetanus when they get sick, like I have in the past, becaue I didn't give them. . .

Just takes once, as in my case, to learn that lesson.

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