Goats with bad skin problem

[natybear]

Okay, so a 4-Her asked me to come look at his herd today. I looked at the animals. Half of them ave really scaly skin flaking off and imbedded in the hair. They are rubbing it off on the wire. It isn't ring worm, I can't find any bugs, and I don't think 8 of his 10 goats are crazy. Is this caused by a deficency, or should he just bath and possibly shave them up. I have never seen this (they are just plain nubians if that matters) before but maybe they just have thick hair and need a good brushing. They do still have a bit of their thick underhair from the winter.

Please advise so I can advise. Thanks & God bless.

[goatkid]

Goats will rub on things when they are shedding. You can't always see lice so it wouldn't hurt to dust them with livestock insecticide such as CoRal. He should be offering his goats a good goat mineral free choice and goats with dry coats are sometimes helped by being fed black oil sunflower seeds in their grain ration.

[BlueHeronFarm]

I agree with goatkid. We had one with some ucky dandruff, too - but when she shed her winter coat it cleared up on its own. ...but it COULD be lice. ...we also coppper bolused recently and that seems to have made coats shinier, too.

[PygmyLover]

A wonderful and easy thing to give a goat with dry skin is Aloe Vera drink. You can find it in the pharmacy department of Walmart (near like the tums etc).

You can drench (use a syringe minuse a needle) 6ccs the first day and then cut back to 3ccs for the following days. Give it for as long as you feel they need it. You can also just put some in their water. I bought the berry flavored kind and my goats like it. I clean out their buckets daily so I just drench the ones who need it.

It is so inexpensive and works!

[lgslgs]

A couple of ours will do that quite badly when they have their spring coat change. What's worked best for us is using a nubby rubber grooming glove (from Tractor Supply horse aisle) and giving then a vigorous massage with it. They don't mind brushing against the grain with that glove and that helps lift the flakes away from the skin.

For the ones who have a thick undercoat a final comb out will take out the flakes with their winter "underwear". The thinner coated ones are harder to lift the flakes off - so we just give them another nubby glove rub down a few days later.

The main thing seems to be getting those flakes up off of their skin so they can get plenty of good fresh air flowing through their coats.

Incidentally, the ones that have the problem here are the ones who've had some major strain on their immune systems in the past. (They are our deerworm survivors and a doe born to a deerworm non-survivor.) We think that they are more prone to it because they are still building their health back up to their pre-disease levels. The vet says it's a staph infection of the skin and that a bath with iodine shampoo would help - but we had this hit during a cold snap and had to stick with brush out and nubby glove massage. Most of the flakes were gone within a week.

Lynda

[Genevieve M.]

One of our goats got terribly flaky skin. When I called her breeder, she said it was a zinc deficiency.

I got her zinc lozenges at the drug store, and dissolved them in mashed banana. She ate that spread on graham crackers.

That cleared it up right away. I was just noticing today how shiny and glossy her coat is now.