[mariegold]

Hello all,

I have just measured the girth of my milking goat and she is about 90cm so 60kilos according to the weight chart I found in another thread.

She is so skinny, I can always see her ribs and her poo is intermittently quite loose at times. I feed her about 2 kilos of goat mix with sugar beet and ad lib hay as well as lots of veg.

I had her poo checked for worms and Cocci but she was all clear. The vet mentioned the possibility of Johnes which filled me with dread! I thought that if she had this she would be scouring all the time?

Her milk yield is pretty constant at 3 litres a day....

Can anyone advise me please? Advice on here is always so much appreciated

[shygirl]

i don't know about diseases, but to increase calories in the diet, you can feed haylage instead of hay possibly. add oil to the diet if she will accept it, or add it to honey chop if she doesn't like it, give her high energy vitamin mollassed buckets etc.
my goats are skinny as they aren't  meat breed. what breed is she?

[Dogwalker]

I've recently started giving mine Caprivite vitamin powder and some who have always had soft poo have firmed up and now have nice easy to clear up pellety poo again.
I presume they were lacking in some mineral before.

[Anke]

There is a difference between healthy skinny (for a dairy animal) and too thin. It is also quite difficult to improve on that when the goat is milked daily - she will put all of her energy into milk... What breed (or cross breed) is she? My GG's weigh between 40 and a good 50kgs, and my largest BT type cross is about 90kgs - and still showing her ribs!

I would however definitely get her tested for a) Johne's (see previous thread from Fiestyredhead) and b) for liverfluke. This is more to rule other explanations for skinnyness out.

If she had a difficult upbringing so to speak - repeated infections from cocci, maybe worms etc her guts and whole digestive system may be damaged, and therefore food absorption may be quite bad. If she is otherwise healthy, happy to be milk and has a sheen to her coat/eyes - then she is just a good milker! But it would be advisable to rest her for a while before putting her back in kid, so if you want to kid her next spring I would dry her off asap and feed up a bit.

Please don't feed haylage instead of hay - listeriosis is distinct possibility with most likely fatal results. I know that many large scale goatbreeders/dairy units have to feed haylage for cost reasons, but in their case the death of the odd goat is not as important as it would be for you. Haylage could be fine, but you cannot see the bacteria and once diagnosed it is usually too late.

[shygirl]

ref haylage - we buy in the small 30kg size bales for the goats so they are fresh, not the huge bales that the ponies / cattle eat. our supplier crates very sweet clean haylage.

[cuckoo]

I would speak to the vet and consider a Johnes test - get the blood test not the faecal test as more accurate - but only PM is 100% accurate.

[mariegold]

Thanks all!!

She is a toggenburgh so perhaps 60kg is a but small? I was hoping to keep milking her until next autumn and dry her up then. Is this unrealistic?

I think I will ring the vet tomorrow and ask about the JOhnes test. If she gets the all clear maybe I will have to bite the bullet and dry her up.

I am currently trying to dry up her companion goat as she has been an incredible nightmare to milk, a much more experienced milker than me has been trying to milk her and agrees that the stress on both the animal and the person doing the milking is too much to bare.

So it looks like I could be completely without milk! I guess that's just the way it goes but its so frustrating.....

I do love them..... but I didn't envisage having them as pets