The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Goats => Topic started by: Zoobec on August 08, 2016, 07:08:06 pm
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Hi, wonder if anyone might know the answer to this please?
I've vaccinated my existing Pygmy goat with heptovac, but my new goat had been vaccinated with Lambivac. Can I just vaccinate with a single booster of Heptovac 6 months after her last injection of Lambivac or will she need restarting with one jab followed by another 4 weeks later?
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Lambivac does not cover all the strains that heptavac does, so yes she would need two doses, 4-6weeks apart to be protected if you were to change to heptavac.
Bearing in mind the shelf life of a bottle of vaccine is 10 hours as they are very unstable, you will want to get your goats on the same as each other, and probably also find other keepers of small numbers to share bottles with.
Instead of changing the new one to heptavac, many goat keepers just use lambivac as goats tend to produce a poor response to clostridial vaccines and therefore many believe a good response to a few strains (those a goat is more likely to encounter) is better than a weaker response to all that are in heptavac. Also it is advised to vaccinate goats at least every 6 months instead of the annual boosters on the data sheet, many goat keepers do this every 4 months.
I'd recommend speaking to your vet, and reading the British goat Society's recommendations to decide what would be best for you.
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Thankyou for that. My vet recommended the Heptovac for my existing goat, and I'm waiting for a reply from them about what course of action they advised for my new addition. I thought I'd ask on here for a goatkeepers advice in the meantime. I knew the advice was to vaccinate 6 monthly, but didn't realise that some people did it 4 monthly, so that is good to know.
Vaccine sharing is a good idea, thanks.