# Coughing Goat Treatment



## woody111

Our pigmy buck has a kind of "dry, hacking cough". Not coughing alot, but enough that i think that he needs some sort of treatment. He is in good shape and eating well. Need to know what would work the best on him, penecilin, LA 200, or something other. What would be your prefered method of treatment. Thank you


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## Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

So if you had a cough you would go get antibiotics? No. Start with the most benign thing first. Have you had goats a long time? Do you know they cough up their cud? When the pastures become dryer they can take alot of hacking, especially when running in from pasture, to hack up that cud. If that is not it, than how about a few days of benedryl or a horse antihistimine if you can get it from the vet. If a cough doesn't come along with snotty nose, fever or lung sounds, than using antibiotics is doing nothing but killing benefical bacteria in your goats rumen.

Lungworm can also cause cough. And since so can worms in general cause stress, tha then aggrevates the goats immune function from anemia, which will proliferate the normal pasteurella in the nose, how about worming him. Use Ivermectin which not only, unless you have resistance, will get stomach worms but is also a good lungworm wormer. Get the Ivermectin Plus if you don't have any ivermectin and give it at 3cc per 100 pounds...you have to syringe if out of the bottle, but then take off the needle and give it to him in the mouth. Do this 3 times, 10 days apart...see if that helps. Problem with lungworm is that if you have it in one you have it in all, so go ahead and do the herd. Vicki


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## susanne

another reason for coughing not mentioned above is dry dusty surrounding or bedding with ammonia smell. both irritate the lining of the lung tissue and leads to more coughing than we would like to see. 
the bedding is easily cleaned if that is the reason. if the pasture is very dry and sandy i guess there is nothing to do.
take his temp and if he has no fever the cough is not from infection and therefore nothing you can treat with antibiotics.


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## Arina

One of mine is coughing and farting at the same time. Totally normal, healthy and happy as a bug and no antibiotics in my little herd. Cough + fart. Normal. But I had to have another goat person to explain it to me, as the combo looked sort of alarming.... Hope yours is just fine.


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## dixiegal62

I know this is an older post but I was looking for info on coughing and came across it. I visited a herd of pygmy goats the other day and noticed a few of them doing a dry coughing thing. I had wondered if it might have something to do with our draught or it it meant they where sick.


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## Jim S.

dixiegal62 said:


> I know this is an older post but I was looking for info on coughing and came across it. I visited a herd of pygmy goats the other day and noticed a few of them doing a dry coughing thing. I had wondered if it might have something to do with our draught or it it meant they where sick.


Hi from TN. We're right close. Dry enough for ya? How about today's "60 percent chance of rain"? Looks pretty puny from here. 

Were the goats being fed soy hulls? Lots of folks around these parts feed them, and they are like dust and will make some goats have a dry cough. The dust from the drought makes things no better. The thing to look at when they are coughing is the nose. If you see a nasal discharge, that is a bad omen. There should be no mucous on the nose. If the cough sounds like there is mucous in the lungs, that is a bad sign. If more than just a few goats in a herd are coughing, that is a bad sign.

I know from personal experience that there can be a low-level of pneumonia-type bug in a herd that can be difficult to eradicate. No goat will get down with it, but the whole herd is affected on a subclinical level. I used Sulmet/aureomycin at the swine dose in the drinking water on my herd when a lot of them took to coughing one winter, and individual treatment didn't seem to make things better. Did the trick. 10-day run of it, and within 3 weeks total, no more coughing.

I think it's best to assess these things herdwide. If you are looking at 30 goats in a herd, and one coughs once or twice, then everything is quiet, that's normal. If you are looking at 30 goats, and you hear a cough over here, now another over there, and there's another one over there, etc., well, that's worth watching and maybe treating.


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## Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

That is such a great point Jim. With how little herds are micromanaged, I always tell mycusomters "Do you think I would have noticed ______________ (fill in the blank with whatever the problem is), if they were back in my herd of 30?" Vicki


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## Jim S.




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## dixiegal62

Jim S. said:


> Hi from TN. We're right close. Dry enough for ya? How about today's "60 percent chance of rain"? Looks pretty puny from here.
> 
> Were the goats being fed soy hulls? Lots of folks around these parts feed them, and they are like dust and will make some goats have a dry cough. The dust from the drought makes things no better. The thing to look at when they are coughing is the nose. If you see a nasal discharge, that is a bad omen. There should be no mucous on the nose. If the cough sounds like there is mucous in the lungs, that is a bad sign. If more than just a few goats in a herd are coughing, that is a bad sign.
> 
> I know from personal experience that there can be a low-level of pneumonia-type bug in a herd that can be difficult to eradicate. No goat will get down with it, but the whole herd is affected on a subclinical level. I used Sulmet/aureomycin at the swine dose in the drinking water on my herd when a lot of them took to coughing one winter, and individual treatment didn't seem to make things better. Did the trick. 10-day run of it, and within 3 weeks total, no more coughing.
> 
> I think it's best to assess these things herdwide. If you are looking at 30 goats in a herd, and one coughs once or twice, then everything is quiet, that's normal. If you are looking at 30 goats, and you hear a cough over here, now another over there, and there's another one over there, etc., well, that's worth watching and maybe treating.


 Thank you fr the info. He feed them corn while I was there. Im not sure if he feeds them anything else. Everytime I noticed a cough it was the kids. It looked like he may have had a bit over 30 goats all together. In the time I was there I would say I heard about 5-6 young ones cough, a dry sounding cough. I didnt notice any mucous the herd all looked lively and healthy. I had thought about getting a buck from him when I was ready but I will be looking elsewhere before I decide and will go visit him again when the kids are a bit older and watch the herd closely.

As for the rain, not a drop all darn day! I was cloudy and mucky and looked like it might, but none **sigh**


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## macantrell1

I have been reading everyone's posts with hopes of finding an answer, but unfortunately I'm not finding exactly what I am looking for so I am hoping someone can help.
I have a goat (Henry) he is a boar cross that is 16 weeks old. He eats grain and hay, but does still receive an evening bottle (at midnight) of 18oz. He lives with 9 other goats and 2 sheep. 
Recently he has come down sick. It started out with a runny nose and then he began to scour. I called the vet and he said it was probably worms. I treated the whole herd with safeguard dewormer (except the sheep I treated them with ivermectin for sheep) (and the lactating goats I treated with positive pellet for lactating goats). I took Henry off milk and grain and started giving him electrolytes 4x per day. Well that seemed to solve it.
Two days later the symptoms had come back. No scours this time just runny nose and eyes (yellowish green) and now a cough. I have resorted to putting nutria drench in his bottles hoping the vitamins will help him feel better. He is still eating fine and doesn't seem to have a fever, but he doesn't play and he looks like he feels miserable. He seems to be loosing weight. Each day when I go out to visit him he just lays his head in my lap and wants to be cuddled rather than jumping off his favorite chair. Where I live has been getting a tremendous amount of rain for the last couple of months so everything is staying pretty wet.
I don't really want to give him antibiotics if it isn't necessary because I know it can do more harm than good, but I don't want him to suffer because I haven't treated him with the right thing. I have rad everything I can possibly find online, but haven't come across anything that exactly fit if anyone can help I would be grateful!!!


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## Caprice Acres

This is an old thread, and you may get more answers by making a brand new one.  

Safeguard and the pellet dewormer are nearly worthless for deworming despite being some of the only approved dewormers available for goats. Most are used off-label. 

Here is an excellent resource for types of dewormers and target worms: http://www.dairygoatinfo.com/f28/worming-worms-wormers-21389/

In a young kid, coccidiosis prevention is also essential. Especially living with older animals. http://www.dairygoatinfo.com/f28/coccidia-different-cocci-meds-doses-21499/

That being said, you should never treat *all* animals in the herd when deworming. You should also look to improving cleanliness and pasture rotation to control worms. There are no dewormers that have not shown to have some resistance somewhere to them, even those that came into the market in the past couple years. Running fecals to see what worms you have and making sure the treatment worked is a good idea. For routine/non-emergency fecal checks, try mid america ag research, which do 5.00 fecals. I ship them samples in a flat rate USPS box for a little over 5.00. They get results to you the evening of or morning after they receive the samples, too.  

http://midamericaagresearch.net/

The snottiness is another issue and not likely to be due to parasites. It is likely independent from or concurrent with the parasite issue, but not because of intestinal parasites. Take his temp. If the snot is copious white/green/yellow or accompanied by depression, lethargy, productive cough, fever, then I'd consider doing antibiotics.


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