The pneumonia saga continues! After full courses of Draxxin and Resflor Gold, we thought we had kicked the disease. But with another couple weeks of rain and temps bouncing from 40 to 80, everyone is acting “off” again. Nobody seems SICK sick like they did before, but just about everyone has runny or stuffy noses, occasional coughing fits, labored breathing, mild fevers, and self-isolation. We weren’t sure whether we were being paranoid at this point, so we called the vet out to look at the whole herd.
Please note that we are not medical experts and the following should in no way be considered medical advice. We always recommend consulting a veterinarian. What we did below was in cooperation with our (amazing) livestock vet.
Yet another antibiotic.
The vet agreed that we need to be careful after our goats were so recently deathly ill, and that they do still/again have congestion in their lungs. Our antibiotic options are limited at this point, so he gave us LA-200 at a dosage of 6CC for adults and 4CC for kids. He said that even with a goat’s quick metabolism, the single dose should last for 3-4 days, and gave us a couple extra syringes in case anyone needs further treatment.
From now on, we will vaccinate.
If this ordeal ever ends, we have made the decision to give any survivors a semi-annual intranasal pneumonia vaccine. When choosing the lesser of two evils, we have determined that a squirt up the nose is less bad than multiple injections of a painful antibiotic and high risk of permanent lung damage and/or death. The vet said that most vaccines marketed for cattle do not work on goats, but a new one is performing well in studies. It isn’t “officially” labeled for goats yet, but his sources state that if outcomes in the studies continue to be positive, they will work towards that soon.
