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Hi folks,
GoatMom sent me an article not long ago that I thought I'd share here in the Message Forum. It is written by Irene Ramsay (see footnote below article).
First, trim the feet right back, including cutting off under-run and over-grown/under-run heels. This lets air at all the bad bits, and the bad foot organisms don't like air.
Footbaths of 10% bluestone (copper sulphate), 5% formalin, or 10% zinc sulphate are suggested for large herds. Immersion should be for 5-30 minutes followed by standing on concrete/clean wooden floor to let the feet drain and dry out.
Goats object heartily to this and in smaller herds individual treatment can be more practical.
For starters, all those footbath mixtures can be done just in a small can (I use cat food cans) and dunk one foot at a time. If you do it this way you can warm the mixture and the goat doesn't object as much as having its foot shoved in COLD wet stuff.
Another alternative is to put the footbath mixture in a pump-action bottle and spray it on - not the formalin though as it will eat plastic - but I wouldn't use it anyway, ghastly stuff and really hurts for hours. (Personal experience). Goats are wimps about sore feet, so using a painful cure doesn't get them back to moving and eating readily, which is what you want.
Spray-on iodine, either the PVP or tincture. PVP doesn't sting so much and dries on as a skin so can offer some protection.
Spray-on of 50% tincture of iodine and 50% methylated spirits (methyl alcohol). Dries, heals and hardens skin pretty fast.
Zinc and castor oil cream (diaper cream). Zinc dries and hardens, castor oil sort of waterproofs and stops skin from cracking. Flowers of sulphur (sublimed or washed sulfur) mixed with lard and smeared on - this is an old horse remedy for greasy heels (horse scald), and is waterproofing. Pays to warm it a little before applying because it's difficult to smear on cold and an animal with sore skin objects to hard rubbing. Can't blame it.
1% solution of alum in water, as spray or footbath - this is specific to certain funguses, so is more likely to work on a secondary infection which has started to spread up the legs.
Gentian violet, used for harness chafe on horses. Apply with q-stick/cotton bud or pump-action spray.
One thing you need to know, whichever remedy works (and I have used a different one on each leg to find out quicker): the first thing to happen is the hair falls out of the treated area, and the skin looks pink - not the same pink as it is now it's sore. It may look a bit swollen/puffy also, but the goat will not be as lame as it was before treatment. After about a week, the pink starts to get paler, and the skin which was feverish starts to peel off. About another week on, the hair starts to grow again.
What could be worsening the situation is if the bedding in the barn is directly on the floor, however deep the bedding is. This allows the organisms to live there, too. In this situation it pays to put wooden pallets (forklift ones are good) on the floor, as they are slatted and the bedding on top. This means the moisture goes through on to the floor but the presence of a layer of air discourages the organisms. Even if they are at the bottom they can't contaminate the bedding and goats so easily. Works on concrete as well as earth flooring.
It might also be worthwhile changing the type of bedding, depending on what you use. For instance, though I like barley straw as bedding, when the animals are having trouble with scald, the "hairs" from the barley ears end up in the straw after going through the harvester, and these "hairs" make a terrible irritation in scald.
The scratchy stems off alfalfa are just as bad. And so on. You can get the same sort of trouble with some types of sawdust and shavings. What can be good if available is pine-tree bark fro, a log-peeling factory, but you've got to be in the right place. Gardeners use it in areas where they want to hold moisture in the soil but don't want weeds. It makes quite good bedding as moisture goes right down to the bottom, and it has to be totally sodden before the top layer is wet.
If the whole barn can't be palleted, an alternative is to put one in each pen for the goats to sleep on and sweep it clean everyday. This means the do have some time when their feet and legs are totally able to have air circulating. The presence of air kills most organisms which affect the feet.
*Footnote - Irene Ramsay has been farming goats for 30 years and has been writing for the goat magazines in New Zealand and overseas since 1972. Much of her work has been to describe how to do things. Goat books tell you to do, but don't tell you how.
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