Tomorrow dry cow treatment

[Cheryl aka JM]

I bought some of the Tomorrow treatment for Peaches~ the goat I've been trying to dry for over a month now. She's not drying up nice and when I milked out her bag earlier this week to give her some relief one of the teats gave brown milk.


So I bought two syringes of the Tomorrow treatment~ milked her out yesterday ~both teats gave white milk yesterday but I went ahead and put 1/2 syringe into each teat just in case. Well~ now I can see her bag is filling again and I just don't know if I should milk it out and treat her again today with the other syringe or if I should leave it. If I keep milking her out she'll never dry up right?

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

You can't dry a doe up if you milk her. Let her udder fill back up, it's the pressure that tells her brain, not to produce oxytocin to make more milk and let down the milk. You only want to ease milk out of an overfull udder that struts the teats. With her attachment being poor and her full of milk, she has obviously injured her udder or even in just running, it flaps against her thigh or hock and bursts capilaries under the skin, this bleeds into the milk, not milking her it dies and comes out as brown milk.

Dry cow her, you do this as clean as you have ever done anything before, and then leave her udder alone.

I don't even put mine back up on the milkstand, because I don't want to trigger that milk let down reflex of coming into the milk room, the music, the feed.......I just stop it all, go out every day and bounce the udder with my hand, if too full, I clip her to the fence and very unceremoniusly milk out each side until it is softer, teat dip and let her go. No food, no massage, no cleaning, no nothing. That is how you dry a doe.

If this doe was bred it would be much eaiser to dry her up. Plus in the photo her head is down and she is eating, why is a doe who is not producing milk for you eating? Vicki

[pookshollow]

why is a doe who is not producing milk for you eating?

You must not have seen the earlier posts - this is one skinny skinny goat. :baby04:

[Cheryl aka JM]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

in the photo her head is down and she is eating, why is a doe who is not producing milk for you eating? Vicki

Because I don't know what I'm doing and so I'm just doing the best I can.

This doe came to me in mid June~ looking like this


She was in milk~ no kids. Already had the severely saggy bag~ one side considerably lower than the other. Very, very, very wormy. Extremely skinny and had a cold. Within a very short time the cold progressed to hacking wet coughs and green snot flowing out of her so thickly I was honestly afraid she would just drown in it.

I wormed her with Cydectin, then with Ivermectin (both oral), put her on 7 days of Pen G twice a day, started giving her 12% protien feed with probiotics on it twice a day, free choice browse and free choice goat minerals, trimmed her feet, gave her the CDT shots and stopped milking her (Storey's guide to dairy goats says to stop milking to dry them up).

She got better~ the cold cleared up, the eye membrane pinked up, she started putting a little weight on her back.........but the bag was engorged, was obviously uncomfortable and hurting her. I milked a little off on someones advice (may have been yours because I recall the just a little without the stand thing). But the bag just filled again and I was worried. Someone (I don't recall who) told me to milk out the old milk since it had been over a month and the one especially saggy side seemed to be getting WORSE as far as the sag. So thats what I did~ thats when I got the brown milk from one teat earlier this week. So someone (here I think) told me to get some tomorrow, milk her dry and treat her so I did that yesterday. I gave her the same 12% all stock feed in the stand that I've been giving her in the shed trying to fatten her up some. I use the stand for milking, foot trims and worming......and they stand still better if they get something to munch on in the stand.

I'm doing this wrong aren't I? I'm really just trying to do the best for this girl and give her a chance~ I don't know how old she is but I suspect shes got some years on her and she's such a sweet girl it just seems to me that she was once someones pet who got dumped at the sale barn to be sold off for meat.......thats not fair~ with that saggy bag and her sweet attitude she gave her best for someone for at least a few years. She's a sweatheart and deserves to be treated like the sweet girl she is.

[catdance62]

I'll bet if you can get her to dry up properly she'll put on more weight too. Sounds like you did everything right to me. The only other thing I can recommend is that if you are in a copper deficient area, bolus her.