Posted by Vicki McGaugh on March 31, 2001 at 17:29:12:
In Reply to: Re: mastitis posted by Sherry on March 30, 2001 at 20:09:24:
We had lots of percocious udders in our LaManchas, one just recently was grand, Best Doe in Show at a youth show in Bryan. If both halves come into milk evenly and you need the milk, than by all means milk her. But if one side matures with the other side not maturing than this is probably mastitis, where both sides maturing is hormonal. We milked out each kind of doe and infused the udder with a dry cow for staph, (Persue) allowing the doe to freshen normally. The doe who one has an obviously mature udder that most judges would look at and think she was bred, but milking her out and inserting the dry cow has now left her with no milk and a soft as a glove udder. Without this percaution we would have does freshen with very lopsided udders with obvious scar tissue (what your doe has) in their udder. I simply started infusing the does because we only used our does for show and milk, and I was getting very tired of selling all really good LaManchas because of their lopsided udders.
Your vet is miss-informed. What a shame! You may want to continue milking the doe and send in a milk sample of both halves to see if their is something up their. After you decide to dry her off, once she dries use a mastitis infusion in both sides. But don't fool yourself, if her udder is really lopsided or the mass is larger than a golf ball, she will always have this.
All our does with udders like this have been our best milkers, but letting nature take its course left us with none of them, before infusing, as show stock. Vicki