Friday, May 15, 2009

Dam of New Junior Herdsire arriving in 2days!!

SGCH California Kalvin's Special K, 90EEEE, #1 top ten milker




According to information available from the American Dairy Goat Association, our little buck’s story started with a doe named White Haven Nasake, an Oberhasli donated to the university by Jean White, Molalla, Oregon. The breeding of this doe to Clovertop's Ecktorsketch Kalvin, a buck donated by Lorrie Echols, Sebastopol, California, herd name SquawMountain, produced the dam of our buck, California Kalvin Special K.

The Clovertop buck behind this breeding was masterminded by a well-known dairy production breeder and ADGA judge, Raymond Vieira, Artois, California. Our buck was the result of an potentially great AI breeding to White-Haven Remus, from semen contributed by Jeannie White. Picture of Remus' dam coming soon, she is a national show champion.

My bucks half sister, the 2009 Spotlight Sale doeling, Kia, was the result of artificial insemination, via donation of semen from the Udderly Crazy herd, Carolyn Hoeker and family, Monroe, Washington.



More about the sire, White-Haven Remus soon.

Home Made Yogurt


via videosift.com

I did two things today. I shopped Amazon for a flip camera and I made yogurt. I haven't gotten my flip camera yet but still wanted to treat you to this video.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

New 2009 Junior Herdsire



This little guy is getting on a plane and flying from UC Davis in California to Dayton Inernational Airport sometime within this next week, probably Sunday. We can't wait to get him.

His dam is the lovely SGCH California Kalvin Special K and AI sire is White-Haven Remus, son of National GCH White Haven Misty. Special K is multiple top ten doe. She has classified 90EEEE and was #2 in her class in the 2005 National show. The ETA of this buck and his two brothers is 99/44 which should put him on the Elite Young Sire list.

Oberhasli Doe Giving Birth

This is video of an pretty Oberhasli doe giving birth to a large half boer buck. The doe yells a lot for a couple minutes, but if you stick with it you will see her afterwards taking care of the baby and obviously very proud of her little one.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Confusion Clears: Vaccines and how they work

Vaccines and how they work, generally but particularly as related to CL

This is a guest post from Bob Glass,Pan American Vet Labs
Hutto, TX
www.pavlab.com

I have posted on this before but this is a clear and easy to understand explanations. It is hard for me to achieve this, being trained in biology. I want to go into biochemistry and cell biology. This is called this and that is called that.

So I hope you understand this. If not, please comment here and I'll try to help. Or I'm sure Dr. Glass wouldn't mind you emailing him directly. This is his stock and trade.

************************

For the sake of simplicity I will use the term "vaccine" as a generic term
here. Actually the term vaccine is correctly used to described a
preparation which stimulates a protective immune response against a virus.
The term for the same type of product against bacteria is "bacterin" and
against toxins is "toxoid"

Vaccines are intended to "simulate" an actually infection in order to induce
the animal's immune system to react as if infected. In many (not all) cases
this will provide protection against future infections. This is the same
logic and mechanism which is employed with human vaccines.

If the same strain of a disease which causes disease were used, the vaccine
caused disease would be just as harmful as any "wild/natural" infection.
There are two strategies to overcome this problem. In some cases the
"vaccine" consists of a live but attenuated (greatly weakened) organism
which is not able to set up a persistent or disease causing infection.
Although weaker and less harmful than a natural infection this "vaccine"
infection will induce a protective immune response. A good example of this
is type of vaccine is sore mouth.

In other cases a killed vaccine is used. In this case the organism which
causes the disease is killed during the vaccine manufacturing process so
that no actual infection occurs. However the vaccine contains a large
number of these killed organisms which are able to stimulate the patient's
immune system. Often when a killed vaccine is used multiple doses are
required to sufficiently stimulate the patient's immune system. In both
these cases the goal of the vaccine is to stimulate an immune response that
kills the organism causing the infection.

In other cases a purified or semi purified vaccines is produced. A good
example of this is vaccines against toxins. Toxins are protein/carbohydrate
molecules produced by various organisms which have a pathologic effect on
the patient. Botulism is an organism which produces toxin. In these cases
it is not enough to kill the organism because the toxin will still be
present and cause life threatening illness. To combat this the toxins are
purified from the organism and "denatured" by various means
(heat/ph/chemicals) to make the toxin non harmful. This denatured toxin is
then injected into the patient who develops an immune response which
neutralizes the toxin. The antibody produced in the scenario is a
"anti-toxin". This is the same as the anti toxin you can buy and give to
animals that have not been vaccinated and become ill due to a toxin
producing bacteria. Anti Toxins are purified and concentrated antibodies
made by vaccinating animals with toxoids.

I have not read the article by Dr. Sparks, but I expect he referred to
introducing the disease organism into the goat (not the disease). In the
case of CL the organism is killed so the actual disease will not occur. In
some cases the patient may have a local immune response at the injection
site. In fact this is the body responding to the dead CL organism as if they
were "alive, thus the abscess, but in this case the CL is dead and the
abscess is "sterile".

I hope this helps;

Bob Glass
Pan American Vet Labs
Hutto, TX

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Liver Fluke in Goats

LIVER FLUKE
(an often-misidentified worm that's lethal if not treated for properly)
Update 2/08 by Sue Reith.


SYMPTOMS:

Liver fluke damage is generally rather slow in appearing in mature goats... In a reasonably healthy goat, it can take years of gradual decline before the owner is even aware that Liver fluke is present. Symptoms are some, if not always all, of the following: Gradual increase in unthriftiness (dry coat, guard hairs sticking up, ribbiness, pale eye membranes (indicating anemia caused by the worm's activity), a swelling under the jaw (that has erroneously been considered among the veterinary community to be symptomatic of resistance to treatment for haemonchus contortus), and, eventually, a possibly sub-normal temp (less than 102 degrees), a distended belly (symptomatic of last-stage liver disease), and fecal pellets that are almost black in color and shriveled up with pointy ends on them.

Often the victim goat is one that has been wormed routinely, and yet still continues its gradual decline. The problem is that there's only one wormer on the market that will wipe out Liver fluke properly, Ivomec PLUS, (the PLUS part being clorsulon, specifically for eradication of Liver fluke) and many owners don't even know this wormer exists! Sadly, even when the owner finally learns about it and starts treatment, by that time there has often already been too much damage to the goat's liver for it to be saved even after proper worming.

BTW: While Liver fluke damage is often found in otherwise well-managed mature goats that despite good care continue to decline in appearance, in my experience this sudden appearance of anemia and weakness with either normal, or subnormal, temp (and sometimes swelling under the jaw as well) is not at all unusual to discover in young ruminants within the first few months of life as well. At that age it commonly shows up when they're heavily exposed to it in pastures containing wet areas, before their immune systems can get up and going to protect them. In fact, it's not uncommon for these young victims to die so fast they hardly have time to be sick.¹ This is especially true if there are any clostridial (Entero) organisms present in them, since they multiply and secrete their toxins fast in the already damaged, poorly oxygenated liver tissue .¹

TREATMENT:

I'm not one to quit without at least doing my best to save the goat...So if a goat of mine were affected with Liver Fluke I'd start it immediately on Ivomec Plus, using the appropriate worming approach as follows: All wormer packages note on the packaging that the product kills off ONLY the adult stages. So in order to get the worm load in the host down to a low enough level so that the immune system can take over and keep the problem under control, you need to worm 3X, with 10 days between wormings. The first dose will wipe out the adults already in there, the second dose will wipe out the larvae as they become adults (but before they can start laying eggs of their own), and the third dose kills off those eggs that were already in there when you started the worming, after they've passed thru the larval stage, when they, too, have become adults.. That leaves just a very low level of the parasites still in the host, the ones that from sheer timing
(good luck?) missed being wiped out by the worming onslaught... And that's just enough for the immune system to keep under control from then on. Having begun the repair process by giving the first dose of Ivomec Plus, the next step would be to immediatelystart it on subcutaneous injections of Ferrodex 200 (each 1 ml dose of which delivers 200 mg of elemental iron), to restorethe liver's red cells, the loss of which was the cause ofthe anemia and the blackened, shriveled, pointy-ended fecal pellets.And at this very critical time, as adjunct (supportive) therapy, I'd give it subcutaneous doses daily of 'Fortified' B-complex' (a combination of B vitamins needed for proper body function that has everything but B-12), essential because every time the patient urinates, it's losing all of those vitamins that are needed to maintenance of its body functions, and BoSe (to support his stressed immune system so that the goat can help itself to get well from
inside, while I work on it from the outside), and Banamine (to reduce the goat's pain and cut the inflammation caused by the worm damage) which, once given, will encourage the goat to want to eat once again! And last but not least, I'd give the goat a preventative doe of C&D antitoxin (to prevent entero from taking this opportunity to sneak in and finish the poor victim off because while it's down its stomach is not digesting food and moving it out of its body as it should.)


BACKGROUND:

Liver fluke is found in most of the US, but it's especially common in the Southern states due to the lack of good frosts to wipe out eggs and larvae in winter. We see it often up here in the Northern states as well, but because we have colder winters, the numbers, fortunately, are somewhat lower. However during the rainy season, no matter what part of the country the goat lives in, the Liver Fluke problem becomes particularly pervasive each year!

Today, by far the most difficult problem that we as owners face with Liver fluke treatment/control is that the veterinary community in general isn't even aware that it's there. As a result, they're unable to recommend proper treatment for it. This is because the egg of the Liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica)² looks so similar to that of the Barberpole worm (Haemonchus contortus)² that when it shows up on the slide in the Vet's office it's routinely misidentified to BE that of the Haemonchus contortus (or perhaps by some general term like strongyles, stomach worms, et al).

Until just a few years ago the veterinarian, seeing what was thought to be Haemonchus contortus eggs on the slide, would recommend Ivomec to the owner as the wormer of choice to eradicate it. And rightly so, because the moment Ivomec appeared on the scene back in the early 1980's, it was recognized as the most effective general wormer to show up ever! And frankly it remains, in my view, still the best and most efficacious general wormer on the market today.

And largely because the real Haemonchus contortus has always responded very well to Ivomec, veterinarians, misidentifying Liver fluke eggs as those of Haemonchus contortus, quite logically continued recommending Ivomec for treatment. When the Liver fluke failed to respond to the Ivomec treatment, unfortunately the loss of the animal in question was assumed to be a sign of the Haemonchus contortus having developed 'resistance' to the Ivomec! This notion has now become so pervasive that the veterinary community in general believes these days that the worms affecting livestock have developed a resistance to Ivomec, the result being a recommendation to their clients that they (1) increase the doses, and (2) turn to other wormers. Neither approach has even slowed down the deaths being caused, in fact, by Liver fluke. Since neither of those suggestions are working, the most recent approach has been to set up Famacha classes to
instruct owners and veterinarians alike in how to check the eyelids of the downed animals to see if they're anemic. If the animals have pale eyelids, indicating they're anemic, owners are sometimes advised to destroy the victim, fearing that if it lives, the 'resistance to wormers' will spread even further.

Sadly, neither plain Ivomec, nor Panacur, nor any of the other general wormers on the market today, are effective against Liver fluke. The fact is, this parasite can ONLY be eradicated efficiently by using a product called Ivomec Plus . It's not the Ivomec itself, but the PLUS part of the combined wormer, which is actually 'clorsulon' , that effectively wipes out Liver fluke. And (very critically) since it only kills the ADULT of the species, clorsulon (just as all wormers) has to be used at regular doses, 3 X in a row, 10 days apart, to kill it off completely. ¹

And it will no doubt be of particular interest for those owners who are worried about using milk from does being treated with Ivomec Plus that the Pharmaceutical companies have now run the required tests on those two products that officially clears them for use in lactating ruminants!

So in my view, these days (particularly if the reader is having a hard time controlling internal parasites in his/her animals) Ivomec Plus (instead of plain Ivomec) should ALWAYS be used for general worming, 'just in case'! Just like regular Ivomec, it can be given orally although it's actually an injectable. But since right now Ivomec itself is less readily being used by people (most of whom have never even heard of Liver fluke, and many of whom have their vets ID their goats' fecal samples as well) Ivomec Plus, while its importance is gradually growing among goat owners, may not yet be available in your local feed store... However it is readily available in livestock catalogs, and online as well, at about the same price as Ivomec.


END

¹ Georgi's Parasitology for Veterinarians, Dwight Bowman, 7th Ed. P116.

² Veterinary Clinical Parasitology, Sloss & Kemp, 5th Ed. P.41, Fasciola hepatica eggs; P.46, Haemonchus contortus eggs

Sue Reith
C Carmelita Toggs
Bainbridge Island WA


(While I urge you to share this information with other individual goat owners, please do not reproduce the article for publication without my specific permission. Thank you. Sue Reith.)