Dairy Goat Farm Trip

I volunteered to go with one of the large animal hospital clinicians to a goat dairy on Saturday. We left the large animal hospital at 8am, and got to the farm about 9:45. This is a very very poorly managed farm, sadly. The owner is not very involved, instead hiring farm managers to take care of the herd. After a slew of managers over the past couple of years, the most recent one realized shortly after he was hired that it was on the verge of animal abuse. He took steps to get the vet school involved in the care and management, and is trying to set up a management system that is best for both the dairy and the goats themselves. The main sticking point is that the dairy mainly produced goat cheese, and in order to meet demand they purchase a lot of goat milk from out of state as well as use the milk produced on the farm.

It's a ~450 goat dairy, and most goats were between 1 and 4 years old. They've never had their hooves trimmed in their lives. Normal goats need their hooves trimmed between 2 and 4 times a year. In an average dairy, the pre-milking ("dry") goats would be looked at several times a year, if not monthly, and the hooves would be trimmed as need. The milking goats would be examined daily as the goats went through the milking parlor, and hooves would be trimmed as necessary. Some of the goats had horns growing back into their heads - some because they had been improperly dehorned, some simply had not ever been dehorned. Some had severe mastitis, and we selected those out for culling. Some were so emaciated that you just wanted to euthanize them right there. We processed every single goat over 1 year of age on that farm (we didn't do the kids) on Saturday. There were about 12 of us. Any goat that wasn't tagged for culling due to body condition or udder condition got its feet trimmed.

I have so many blisters on my hands that I want to cry. Every muscle and joint in my body feels like I've been hit by a truck. I wrenched my shoulder about 3:45, and had to stop, but I was still using my good arm to catch and move the goats around. Fortunatly, after a couple of hours rest my shoulder stopped hurting. Hoof trimmers are SHARP, and I have random puncture wounds all over my hands from them (4 that are infected), only one open blister (2 closed), and it hurts to clap. Some of the hooves looked like flippers, literally inches too long. Many had foot rot, and most of the hooves were deformed. Hopefully now that they're all cut down the farm can manage a maintainence program in the future. We also got them down to mostly healthy goats, which is a good place for a dairy to be. Instead of calling animal rescue, the vet school decided to work to put a management program in place and maintain a working relationship. This was the first big step.