CD&Ts 101 w/ Dr. Yalonda Burton & Dr. Katie Jackson

[Music] It's that time of week the time you've been waiting for, it's time for goat gab. A weekly podcast about all things in the dairy goat industry. Sit back and enjoy an hour or so with your hosts, Laura Warren Hughes and Cameron Judlowski. As we talk about ideas and topics that matters in the dairy goat world. Welcome back, people of goat gab. As always, I'm your one of your co-hosts, Cameron Judlowski. I have your other co-host, Laura Warren Hughes. We are so excited to be here tonight and especially excited to welcome two guests to our podcast tonight. A topic so big we thought we needed two guests and I couldn't welcome a more smart, talented, amazing people if I asked as well. They are Dr. Yolanda Burton and Dr. Katie, I want to say wolf because you will always be a wolf to me. Jackson. Thanks, glad to meet you. Absolutely. All right, let's start with some formal introductions here. We'll go Dr. Yolanda Burton first and then Dr. Jackson after that. Just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself and of course your practicing clinician knowledge is well being two respected veterinarians in the industry. I am Dr. Yolanda Burton. I graduated in 2000 so I've been out for a little while, I've been in Oklahoma that whole time. I have a mixed animal practice here in still well Oklahoma and have been here since I graduated. I opened it up as a solo practitioner right out of school. See a lot of different things but in my large animal side see a lot of goats just because it's a special interest to me. We have a herd of goats because of my four daughters which are mostly grown now but that's how I got. Kind of started into the goat side of it and just really enjoyed the goat medicine part of it especially. So I'm Dr. Katie Jackson. I grew up showing dairy goats. We've had them since I was seven. I grew up in West Virginia and then I moved to Kentucky for school for undergrad. I ended up staying here long-term and I graduated in 2021 from Lincoln Memorial University in Northeast Tennessee. I did two years of just a general mixed large animal so it was probably about 50% equine. Maybe 30% bovine, 20% smart, remnant, and pigs. I've been out on my own now for two and a half years and I see 90% smart, remnant. So sheep, goat, alpaca, llama, and then that other 10% is just your general cattle, equine, pigs. And so yeah, I do a lot of sheep and goats relative to most people around here. And I obviously still have some dairy goats so I breed over-hazley and record a grade as well. We are thrilled to have both of you and yeah thank you for the intro. Cameron, is there anything going on in your farm that you want to touch on before we get into our cool farm? I mean I don't have much, it's been kind of explosion. We've been really active on social media doing some videos, we've never done that before. So you may have seen that we are captains of the pan feeding team and combating all of the people on the internet that tell us it's bad. Let's be right again, it's just been baby polluted here. Laura, anything happening in your house? We want to talk about you want to touch on real quick? No, not yet. Still waiting on babies so this weekend, yay, it'll be baby weekend. We're all pumped about that. So, um, won't and will scare it. I mean, you know, you know how that goes. So, um, we're always excited to have babies and then there's always the not so fun side of having babies but really looking forward to it. So we've had beautiful weather and Missouri. So I've had a good time going on lunchtime walks with the goats out the pasture. That's kind of fun. Reminds me why I love goats. Dr. Wolf, anything happening in your neck of the woods? Do you have babies on the ground? Yeah, I've got 10 babies on the ground. So I wrapped up my first group of those kidding. I had five do at the same time and that all went pretty smoothly. And so now I've got another group of two coming up. I was out of town when that first group was recycling after some a eyes. And then I've got another big group of five three weeks after that. So it's a little bit quiet right now until I've got more goats kidding this weekend. But not too many. And did I see Dr. Jackson? I'm going to get it right eventually. That's okay. Because I just I have known you for so long. I haven't come to hold that. Wasn't this your first lap A.I that you stuck? Yeah, it was. And one of those was one of my goats and then I had a couple settle for some clients too. So that was pretty exciting. I think the client goats kiddin first. So I sold my thunder a little bit. Yeah, my first lap A.I was on one of my goats and she took. So that was very exciting. Awesome. Awesome to hear. And Dr. Burton anything happening in the bustling with troubles is still well. It is nice and quiet for another couple of weeks. Somehow I missed all of the September cycles on my goats probably because of state fairs and such. And so I have like 30 new in March, which was not the plan originally. But I hate May baby. So I just started reading everybody that came in here and that's what happens to you when you don't think it out. So what's about to get really busy? I hate me. I hate maybe these two. Yeah, I do. And then still I have having like two in May and one in June. I don't know what I was thinking. I lost my mind. I just envision at your lot of this house being like you get a buck and you get a buck and you get a buck and you get a buck and you get a buck and it's Oprah Winfield. It was totally going that way. And you know what I'm when I'm away for a few days, my husband's just sending me pictures of goats. And I'm sending him back pictures of the buck he needs to put it with and I'm hoping that all goes well. See my husband won't breed goats and I'm gone. That's why I've only got two do this weekend. I've got seven goats and he was gone. And he said, nope. So that's fair. It is. See, he won't milk goats. He'll breed goats, but he won't milk them. We just have to load everybody in the trailer if we're going somewhere. Wow. Awesome. Awesome. So we're going to go on to the main topic of the day here. We have two veterinarians on here to talk about their experience with the sea, the D and the T or a CD and T shot. And Laura, I want you to kind of tell the listeners your first experience with CD and T and why it was so important. Yeah. So we all like like most people, you know, we were told everybody gets a CD and T. You give it, you know, when they're babies, you give them a series of two shots. And every year you give them another shot as a booster. And if they're going to be kidding, you try to time that booster about a month before they kid so that the kids get some passive immunity to it. So I'm like, OK, yeah, this will be great. So we did that. And I just like a lot of people, we noticed that we had a lot of, for lack of a better word, I'm sure there's a scientific word, shot not. You know, there's, there's bumps that come up and they look bad. You know, if you squeeze on them, sometimes there's aching gunk inside of it. And you know, that just seemed to be a real pain in the neck to me. And I just didn't like them. Sometimes they leave scars. And so after talking to some other breeders, they're like, you know, we've never had, we've never had horses on her property. So we're not worried about tetanus. And we've never had intero toxin yet ever. So I think it's a waste of time to vaccinate. And I think it causes more problems than it solves. So we quit vaccinating. And about two years after we quit vaccinating, we had some dose that just kind of out of the blue died. And they were obscure, they were obscure symptoms. Sometimes they'd scour. Sometimes they would scour and we'd get them better. And then all of a sudden, they would just like die. They had low temps when we take their temperature. Then we started like rushing them to the vet at the first signs of of issues. And the vet was like, I have no idea what's going on. This animal acts like they're septic. We just don't, I just don't know what this is. So we lost 17 goats. Some were aged those, some were kids, some were dry yearlings, some were milking yearlings, some were, you know, in the private life. no rhyme or reason to why we're losing them in. And you know, things get pretty bad. When you go out and you're like, great, it's time to chore. I wonder who I'm going to find is dead this time. I mean, it was, it was that bad. So after dealing with it all year long, we lost one of my daughter Elizabeth's very beloved son and those. And like, I felt like I, you know, at the first sign that she was acting off, I brought her in the barn. I, you know, did everything that I thought I'd mean to do. You know, I gave her a band of me and I gave her, I gave her, I knew floor thinking, maybe this is silent. No, I just didn't know what it was. She really wasn't scouring. But her temp was very low. And I was sitting with her in the barn when she passed. She like seized and then she died. It was horrible. So I got up the next morning and drove her to the University of Missouri for a knee crop seat because I'm like, I, you know, I just, I just can't do this anymore. And when my vet called me with the results, she said, Laura, I don't know how this can happen. But there's, they say that she died from interotoxemia. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And she said, well, I told them that can't be right because you vaccinate. And I said, well, no, I don't. We stopped vaccinating about two years ago. It was just like dead silence. She said, I never thought to ask. And I said, and I never thought to tell you. So a big plug for having good transparency and communication with your vets. And so we started back on the whole vaccinating thing and haven't lost a single dose since. Very, so that's my story. And I love that story. And what it really inspired this topic was my dad said, hey, to us, hey, will you get us some CD and T? But you get me some CD and T. And I said, okay, my wife said, what kind does he want? And I said, I don't know. There are different types. Question mark. My dad said there are different types. Question mark. And my wife kind of explained it all to me. And I thought, oh, and then my dad said he wants the orange and blue one. And I said, okay, I don't know what color that is. But okay, I mean, I'll figure it out. But yeah. And then I got a Snapchat a week later from somebody asking the same question. I was like, okay, we need to talk about this here. And so that's why we're on this topic today here. And Dr. Jackson, you definitely had so much experience with this too. Yeah. So I kind of like Laura, at some point grown up, we had a bunch of goats that despite vaccination, we're getting clostridium. And so we got really good at treating it, unfortunately. But at that point, we were like, okay, so why are we vaccinating when it doesn't even work? And so we did stop vaccinating for a few years before vet school. And we didn't have issues with intertoxineous so much as we eventually lost a dose to actually tetanus after a scurre removal attempt. And after that, I mean, it was just really eye opening of, okay, well, that's something totally preventable. You know, you feel really guilty when it's something that happens that you can prevent like that. And so even if it's not a perfect vaccine, we decided to add it on back in. And Dr. Burton, you saw something similar too, correct? Yeah, we were, we were, we've always tried to be really good at vaccinating, but sometimes when you're working with young children that are partly in charge of care, things get missed or goats get missed and that sort of thing. And we ended up having one of our own kids and one of our babies get tetanus after a disbiting. And we treated her for a couple of weeks. And the hardest part was her, was she never died, but she never got better. She couldn't walk and, you know, then we have to make the decision to put her down. And it's one of those things where just like Dr. Jackson was saying, you know, that was, that was definitely something we could have prevented and was definitely our fault. That happened. And so it makes you rethink what you're doing and to not skip steps, for sure. So nobody's perfect on this podcast, even even our veterinarians are not. But what that being said, going into the details, what exactly is a CD and T? Shot. So I can start with this. So CDT, the C, those letters they stand for clostridium perforingians type C and D. And then the tetanus kind of takes up for the T. So although the vaccine is not specific against clostridium types A or B, there's a nice little chart out there on the internet that shows all the different toxin types. And it is a toxoid vaccine. So what that means is that we're ultimately vaccinating against the toxins that are produced by the specific strains of clostridium perforingians. And so the diseases that we see that we're trying to prevent are commonly called overeating disease or enter a toxinia. But in general clostridial diseases, the whole broad category, not just perforingians, they are going to hit hard, they're going to hit fast. You might see like a sudden death and typically you're best doing animals is what they say on the textbook anyways. And so you're not necessarily going to be able to know who it's going to be or when, but that's kind of one of your classic textbook signs. And again, it's not a perfect vaccine. No vaccine is perfect. But what I've found, especially here in practice, is that you're going to have a much better chance at treatment if you have a CDT vaccine already on board. And what I say with a lot around here, I've got a lot of commercial cheap producers and you know they've got a couple hundred head, they're not going to vaccinate every single one. And that might work fine in dandy form for a little while until all of a sudden it does not. And so they're losing lands left and right. And of course with anitoxin, so hard to get if you don't have that available to you and you don't have animals that have been vaccinated, you're going to lose a lot of them. Sorry, I would probably just add in, I know that as dairy goat breeders, we're all very frugal people and we try to do things as easy as possible at a very economic rate for us. But this is one of the cheapest vaccines you can get. And so even like Dr. Jackson said, even if you're doing a hundred head, the cost to save even one one adult or one offspring would be worth vaccinating an entire herd of them. And so it's not an expensive thing to do. And we need to remember that. So for those of us that maybe get confused between antitoxin versus the toxoid, could you guys jump into that little deeper? Yeah, so the antitoxin, that's going to be a product that ultimately provides antibodies in a way against the specific thing. And so there's really one main company out there that produces all these antitoxin type products. And so there's going to be things like your tetanus antitoxin, your C&D antitoxin, boba serious one, just to some extent. And so what they're going to do is, in my mind, they just quickly get antibodies on board into the system to be able to hopefully fight that disease process a little bit. And so they're not going to necessarily provide your long-term immunity. But if you've gotten something that maybe doesn't have a vaccine history and you have that antitoxin available, it's going to be kind of your saving grace, whereas your vaccine, your toxoid, what that's doing is it's presenting those toxins, the deactivated toxins to the immune system and letting the immune system mounts in a immune response to it. And so that's a process that does take a little bit longer. That's why we want to get that into those long enough in advance before our kidding that they can build those antibodies and get it into their immune system. But it also means it's something that is not necessarily going to be like an instant fix in the face of an outbreak on an animal that's already sick. Okay, so why is it so impossible to get the antitoxin right now? So actually, it looked this up a couple weeks ago. And I don't remember the exact explanation offhand. But Colorado serum company that is the main one that makes that product. If you look on their website, they've actually got it kind of spelled out exactly what's going on, which I think the transparency is nice because usually, you know, stuff goes on back order and you don't necessarily know why. But their explanation, let me see if I can get this right, paraphrasing a little bit. But they produce, like I said, pretty much all the antitoxin products several years ago about when I graduated vet school. They were kind of linking equine parbovirus to one of the equine liver diseases out there. And so once they made that link, whoever regulates vaccine production, I want to say it's FDA, but they came in and said, okay, your horses have to have no antibodies practically to equine parbovirus. And that's for specifically, they're worried about the tetanus antitoxin because of its link to this liver disease and horses. But that's had downstream effects. And so now those horses that could not be used for producing that vaccine because of that new regulation, well, you take them out of the line and now they can't be used for producing the C&D antitoxin vaccine either. So it's those little things like that that just kind of have downstream effects. I know in the past we've seen things like factory renovations, having an issue with vaccine production and some factory over here catches on fire. And you don't always know, but Colorado's here in the company's actually been pretty upfront about what's going on in that one. Okay. Well, good to know. So for those that do not know, Dr. Burton, what does the CD and T actually protect against? So what type of things are we looking for in our protection? So it's just protection against those diseases that are released in those toxins. So the Cluster deal, um, perforanges has several toxins that are produced. And this is to when you vaccinate, you're creating those antibodies. So if they catch that disease, they have some immunity to try to fight it off or to help you fight it off when you when you find them sick. And then with the tetanus, it's like tetanus and other animals. It's just creating those antibodies to try to prevent them from getting tetanus, which they get from any sort of open wounds. Tetanus is naturally in the dirt. And so obviously the goats are being exposed to dirt continually. And so disputting is a common time. If you're putting castrations or banding, that's a common time. Any sort of wounds they get can be a reason for them to pick up tetanus. And so we're trying to prevent those three things, which are three common things in goats and sheep. And that's why we picked the Cluster deal disease that has those three specific vaccine types in it. So what I always find interesting is there's always a whole different, there's different ways. There's like a three way, there's a nine way, there's like a seven way, there's a million way. It's my wife seems to find in the internet somewhere. So what are those different ways? Like what does each different type mean with different ways there? And then how is a goat producer? Maybe this is taken to like an advanced step or a long answer to a question. Which way do we evaluate to be the best for our herd? So I think one of the biggest issues. Yeah, one of the biggest issues I see is they go out to buy their CD and T or they're to buy a Cluster deal vaccine. And owners don't realize that they're not all created equal. And so they may buy one. That's a five way, but it doesn't have CD and T in it. And so I think for goat owners, it's important to make sure you're getting that in your Cluster deal vaccine. If you need other things, you've had diagnosis on your farm with needing to have more coverage for other Cluster deal diseases. That's fine. They make those, but I think we always have to remember that they make a lot of Cluster deal vaccines that don't have CD and T in them. And so for goat owners, you need to be very cautious that if it's not just CD and T, that it does include it in the makeup of that vaccine. Yeah, that's just what I was going to say is just making sure that you're getting a vaccine that actually has those components that we care about. So the Cluster deal perforingians type C and D and then also that tetanus because a lot of feed stores will have just a black leg vaccine or if you go in there and ask for Cluster deal vaccine and they're used to the cattle guys coming in and just want black leg. A lot of those vaccines are not going to have necessarily perforingians coverage or even tetanus coverage. And furthermore, you can get so many more things that you necessarily need. And so I would say most folks just need to stick with the basic CD and T unless you've had other things or other risk factors going on on your farm and then maybe reach out for broader coverage. But for the most part, just that CDT is going to get you 90 plus percent of the time. Laura, what do you, what CD and D product do you use on your farm? I use the Colorado serum one, the Essential 3 plus T is what they call it. The reason why I started using that one and I've used others before, I don't remember what the other one was I used before. I think it was an orange label. But anyway, this one was recommended to me because they said it in their experience and it didn't cause shot knots with it. And I really haven't had any problems with it doing that. But I'm really interested in knowing if there is a certain brand that's better than another or not. But this is what this is the brand that I use. So docs, if you guys have something to weigh in on that, I would love to know it. And you know, maybe if you can say it like not to be obsessed with those knots, but they're kind of the pain of the neck and I don't know what causes them. Yeah, I have a question about that actually. Like what causes them? Like why do they happen? I feel like I've used the bar vaccine by Boeingur for a long time and I feel like we have fairly good luck with it. I think they're all going to cause a little bit of a reaction. And everybody's going to kind of have different opinions of what vaccine they like. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any studies out there that are actually comparing this like with real data and it's just kind of going off of personal experience. So it's hard to find one. And what I would say is the one that makes the client happy is probably the one to use. As long as it's a good vaccine and the client feels like they're not seeing as many vaccine reactions than that's good. And typically when you see a knot like that, it can be infectious. You're using dirty needles. We're vaccinating goat after goat after goat with the same syringe and things like that. But it also can just be an immune, a super heavy immune reaction that's creating that sort of excess, excess reaction at that side. I was going to say I use the same one as you Laura. I use essential three plus T most of the time. I use that in my client herds and then I use that half the time on my goats. I do actually use cavalry nine and that's because several years ago I lost. I had a couple of days. I lost a different Cluster Deal things admittedly not confirmed by official labney crops. I just cut them open and said this looks like this. And one of them we never really did nail down. It kind of looked Cluster Deal type A. So I was like, well, maybe if we just kind of mix up our coverage a little bit. But then the other one was we were treating her for what looked like pretty classical inner taxis. And she was just not getting better. And then kind of towards the end her skin started to split open. She developed air bubbles underneath her skin. I mean we'd been using clean needles all the time and it just looked a whole lot like malignant edema and which is not really well reported in goats. But given those two losses that close together and their related animals, of course, they're the best animals. And I kind of switched and went broader coverage. At the time I went with covex and eight, but man everybody got big old knots from that one no matter what I did. And so I've switched from that to cavalry nine. And I feel like that's done pretty well. For me, I'm vaccinating them twice a year. So I'll use the just plain CDT usually before kidding. And then I like to do the cavalry nine before breeding season. But again, that's what works for me is that twice a year vaccine. I feel like it's pretty effective for me. Most folks I'm just going to recommend just plain CDT once a year unless we have any kind of other problems. Dr. Burton, do you recommend for your producers that you work with that CDT just once a year or just as it kind of depend on the client situation? Yeah, it's definitely going to be based on the clients and kind of how they're managing their herd and what kind of issues they've had in the past. Anybody that's that's dealing with any interotoxemia, I do recommend twice a year simply because the vaccine, although it's good at protecting, it's not very long lived. And there's been some studies that suggest even at 60 days year antibodies kind of start to go down already. And so it's not a, although it's helping it's to get your full effect, you're going to have to do it more often to try to provide enough protection in, you know, high infection areas. Anybody that's pushing, you see a lot in market goats where they're pushing them on the concentrate so hard and they're going to be a lot more susceptible to clusteredial diseases. And so those guys probably need vaccinated at least twice a year if not more. Anybody that's using a lot of green lush pasture, which not a lot around here a lot. We have nice green grass, but the goats aren't on it. So those sort of situations, if they're getting exposed to things that are going to bring out more clusteredial disease, then we vaccinate more often. But in a normal herd that's managed well, a lot of times once a year works okay. Just right before kidding. And so talking about that life cycle there, generally in the dough side of the house, we'll see you, that recommendation once a year. But what's that look like on the kid's side of the house? Because that's obviously a little bit different. And I'll toss this one to Dr. Jackson. Yeah, so if a dough got her vaccine before kidding, like, I I like four to six weeks pre-kitting personally. I feel like that gives them time to mount an immune response and then also get those antibodies into their colostrum. Assuming I do got that, my kids will get their initial vaccine at three to four weeks of age, usually based on what the label says and then a booster three to four weeks after that. I don't have a problem with them getting one earlier, saying that first week or so of life. The problem with that is you may or may not mount a great immune response because of maternal antibody interference. And so with that kind of in mind, you're still gonna have to have two more shots after that initial one. And I've kind of been on the fence about adding that first one in on my kids. I don't have a whole lot of kid losses, but when I do, it's usually something like floppy kid syndrome where they just suddenly go off feet and then they crash and that's usually right around when they're getting that first booster, especially if their colostrum intake wasn't great. So for the kids, that's kind of a nice, it depends answer, but broadly three to four weeks old with a booster, three to four weeks after that, assuming the damn got vaccinated. We can add in stuff if we've had issues. After that, in general, once a year is gonna cut it or we can do twice a year or more, like we said, if we've got other issues going on. - So for some of our newer listeners or maybe some of our listeners who have just been really blessed and not ever had to deal with interotoxemia, can you turn it talk about some of the symptoms that people might see if they've never experienced it before? - So a lot of times it'll be just a settle maybe kid didn't finish their bottle or maybe they're just a little bit sluggish or something's just not quite all, not quite right. They look a little bit bloated, a little bit slow. And for me, it's usually that like two to three week age ballpark that you might see this most typically. I've also seen like more extreme signs or they're just pooping straight blood. That's never a good thing. And usually they just don't do too well, but just the subtly off kids that are not finishing their bottles, you've really got to pay attention to them 'cause a lot of times that's gonna be your sign that they're getting interotoxemia. And so for those guys, a lot of times it'll present as a floppy kid syndrome. So basically they're just so acidotic that they can't function at all. And I don't know if there's been a whole lot of work done on the link there, but I do think it is a flash deal overgrowth, maybe in the abamason that causes that. And so those kids, if you can get ahead of it with some antibiotics and with some anitoxin, you can generally do have a shot at it, but it's something that's easier to prevent with good maternal antibodies and good colostrum to kind of start with in those kids. - And Dr. Burton, if you see this in adults, what kind of things might you see? - Yeah, you know, what I just feel people to look for and especially new-goed owners is these, these goats act like their belly just hurts really bad. Some of them are crying, some of them are moaning. They really don't wanna do anything, they don't wanna walk, they don't wanna eat, they're just, they're really lethargic. And so most of our clients that aren't, maybe they're new into goats or they don't know what they're looking for and they don't know how to check certain things, you can ask them, they act like their belly hurts, some of them will get up and get down and get up and get down. And I think, you know, when we do knee crops, he's on these goats and you get inside him and their gut gets filled with this toxin and it just starts to break down the wall and it starts to turn kind of necrotic and purple and the bowel is just really angry looking and so you can imagine that they're just, you know, they can't get comfortable, they can't, they don't wanna do anything. I mean, I'm sure they're thinking, I'm not gonna make it and so we just watch for really painful abdomens and just super lethargic and like Dr. Jackson mentioned earlier, it can be fast. Sometimes they're fine that morning and you come home after work and they're already passed away and so it could happen super fast and so the other thing I recommend is if, and this is really with anything, if you see your goat and it don't look right, if it didn't come up to the feet as fast as it normally does or anything out of the ordinary, don't wait around. That can be serious problems in goats and so especially with cluster of diseases that happen so fast, you know, and 12 to 24 hours we go from normal to, you know, on the verge of death so. - So the experiences that I have where the goats had a sub, sub-normal temperature, was that a fluke or is that also something? 'Cause I know we've been, you know, we've had several guests on that have said, I wish that my clients would take their animals' tips. That is such, that can tell you so much about it. Is that temple, is that, is that typical that their temperature is low or was that just something like experience? - I would expect their temperature. Yeah. - Seeing it both ways, I've seen it be normal and I've seen it be low too. - Yeah, I feel like at the very beginning, like when the infection first starts, I feel like that it can be high and then as that goat starts to get necrotic and die, then everything's kind of shutting down, including their temperature regulation and so that temperature starts dropping. And so Laura, you may, when you were getting low temperatures, those goats may have been just advancing really fast and had a lot of necrotic gut inside that was just, they were no longer regulating. - Okay, good to know. I mean, that's awful. It makes me just even saddered. It's just so hard. - Yeah. I want to circle back around to something that Dr. Jackson said about antibodies going into the colostrum there. Do we worry about a lack of antibodies from a mom's CD&T getting to the kid if they're feeding a powdered colostrum, or colostrum replacer as compared to colostrum directly from the mother? - Yeah, that's a good question because most, if not all of our colostrum replacer products are gonna be bovine and origin. And so we don't necessarily know what kind of vaccines those animals have had. I mean, calves, they can get colostrum disease too. And so I had seen those cows have a pretty good immune response. And I feel like I've had pretty good luck with kids that have been fed powdered colostrum. And so I'd rather have like a good quality powdered colostrum than a dough that maybe has some kind of sketchy colostrum or if you're noticing that year after year, your kids out of this dough just tend to not do all that great that might be one to investigate for colostrum quality issues. But yeah, if we can use colostrum from maybe a herd mate that's been well vaccinated, that would to me be preferable than just random cow colostrum 'cause we don't necessarily know what they've been vaccinated against, but I would rather a cow replace your colostrum than really kind of, can't think of a great word for it. But if we've got a dough that's not putting out a good colostrum and we know it's maybe don't use colostrum. - Dr. Burton, any worry about those producers that use that colostrum replacement and not getting enough anybody's, and we're correct if I'm wrong, some do cross the placental barrier of the mom, correct? - Right, yeah. So there's, you know, they're getting some immunity initially and then getting a colostrum in a afterward is definitely helping boost that up a little bit. So like for those kids, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't find it wrong to vaccinate them even earlier at a week or two weeks old to make sure you feel like they're covered for the CD and T. And I'm like Dr. Jackson, if you've got a dough that you can use good quality colostrum on, that's always preferred. Your links probably, they have good colostrum, but they haven't had the time and experience to build as many antibodies as an older dough and then as doughs get older, their quality kind of starts to go down. So those middle of the road, two to five year old doughs are gonna have your best colostrum in the herd. And if you're having to use a powdered colostrum, it wouldn't be wrong to vaccinate a little early and maybe vaccinate three times instead of two to make sure those babies are covered. And unfortunately, there's not a goat-powdered colostrum product out there, it's all cattle. - Correct. - Correct. So, all right, that answer, I mean, that's a good, I think about this all the time 'cause we use powdered colostrum. So. - So kind of touching on the tetanus part, we all hear about tetanus, oh, lockjaw, that's a terrible thing. What are some symptoms that you would look for? I mean, you think you're gonna know what it looks like, but maybe not necessarily, and are there certain environments where you really have to be extra careful about tetanus? - So I would say on the goats, I don't see it quite as much as the horses in the cattle, but where I have seen it has been, like we talked about those disbudding sites. And I mean, in theory, it's gonna be more of a soil contamination kind of thing, like I've seen it in kids that were dispended and it seemed like a pretty clean and environment. I will say where I've seen it happen probably the most is maybe we don't do as good of a job as we should getting that horn-bud burned all the way and so they get a little bit itchy and bring that foot up and kind of scratch at it and introduce that bacteria that way is probably where I see it the most. That and in like kids that have been banded that creates that anaerobic environment if maybe they're too big when we banded them and they don't have that tetanus on board. And so what you'll see the science in kind of area but for the most part you're looking at just a general stiffness. So I've seen them where they just walk really stiffly that third eyelid so that kind of that pink inner corner of their eyelid will kind of come up and flash over their eye not as much in goats as in like horses and cattle. The other thing is I saw a cattle case with it one time as a new grad. I got this call for a bloated calf and so I'm out there trying to pass the tube on this bloated calf and oh gee I can't get his mouth open. He's kind of walking funny, isn't he? Oh by the way we just banded him a couple weeks ago. This is a tetanus case and so sometimes it's those little things that kind of add up to point you in that right direction if it being a tetanus case. And I think one of the unique things with tetanus in that is that they usually don't feel really bad like they're they're trying to walk around they're trying to go to food and a lot of them will eat even if you help them get to it they can't they can't move as well or they can't use their muscles as well and so they have a hard time eating on their own as the symptoms advance but most of them don't feel bad they're just they just their muscles don't work anymore. And there's no cure for tetanus. So you can you can save some of them I mean if you have access to the antitoxin and then treatment I would say the chances aren't great but there are some of them that can make it through it with pretty intensive management and treatment it takes a ton of antitoxin to get over it so. Yeah lots of antitoxin and antibiotics. Exactly. So when I when I moved this past winter my veterinarian encouraged me to give everybody a booster before we moved because they had like five horses on this property. Is that something that people need to look out for if they have horses on their property or have had horses is that does that put them at a higher risk and why is that if that's so. I feel like I've seen it even where they don't have horses on the property. So there there might be something to that but I would still kind of lean towards just keeping your tetanus coverage constant anyways regardless because it does seem like it's just out in the environment anyways. Yeah I think the horses probably get a bad rap for tetanus because they catch it so easily like one of the most common species to get tetanus is going to be horses that could be because they injure themselves a lot and it could be because they're just not very hearty animals but whatever it is they get tetanus easier than anybody else and so because of that we assume they're also giving it to others where but it's just in the environment and so they're all exposed to it the same I think if it's in the environment it's just horses are the most common to pick it up easily. Okay good news there's not that horses bring you tetanus it's just that okay that makes sense thank you. So we talked around a little bit but I guess is there like a scientific name for the shot not that we often see or is it just a shot not? I looked this up and I forgot it already I can pull it up again. It was in Dr. Wuer. I guess in Dr. Wuer. I'm just going to take you in to find it. I can find that. It had a long fancy name. I'm sure Dr. Wuer if you've got the doctor you've got the doctor Smith book read into a G.D.T. like program. Thanks for it there. The doctor Smith book was one of my best purchases though. We just try to make sure clients are given that shot you know knowing that it's a potential to have a pretty good size not there. Given it in a location where it wouldn't be suspicious of CL given giving it on the side that's not the show side in case it leaves a scar giving it you know an area where it's not as conspicuous and that sort of thing and so there's definitely things you can do to where the knot is not that big of a deal. My kids give me a hard time because I give it a little bit above the elbow and they are always saying because I'm trying to make it look like their elbows are blending better when they get swollen but I mean it doesn't hurt but it's a good place for it. Vaccine granuloma is the best I'm coming up with. I thought I found a longer fancier name but we'll go with that I guess. So we'll say that one more time. A vaccine what? Granuloma. Granuloma. That does happen. A vaccine granuloma. I'm glad it does to someone. I think I'm going to stick with shot knot. Well for me I've always the one who's like there's a shot knot let him take care of that because you know I like if he thinks like this my girls are like small and close. It's the nurse in me I guess that comes out. Dr. Burton. You had mentioned that you'd like to give your CD and T's during this butting is there any thought behind that because my wife has started doing that too and originally I thought I was just kind of out of you know a little bit of oh where he's going to do it at the same time but just to remember to do it but but she's like there's a reason so. No I know it's in the dose where if you haven't vaccinated your dose that's a pretty good timing to go ahead and give it and it's easy because they're just they're there and you're already working on the baby at the time and so it's a good way to remember and not have to go catch them another time. There's not really if you if the dams have been vaccinated like you're supposed to be doing you really shouldn't need to do it while you're disbiting you can do it later. If you're using powdered colostrum that wouldn't be a bad time to give the first vaccine. Yeah sure. Yeah sure. I always give I always do it at a week or when I'm disbud them I've always done that and maybe you know maybe it isn't a maybe they're not getting as much immunity from it but that I also give it like two weeks after that too. Yeah I think the key is if you're going to give it that early you need to do three of them instead of two of them and if you wait until if you're if you're not having to give them until four weeks then you can do it just do two. It's one of those things where vaccines super early may not help any if they have enough immunity already it's just kind of counteracting it but we don't have any way to know that and so it definitely won't hurt any. So we need to hit on this. I would probably just say I would just say one more thing to be sure to follow the label directions as far as dosage and route because that's how those vaccines were made and tested and so going off label for dosage or route is definitely not recommended if it says two CCs do two CCs if it says sub queue do sub queue some of the cattle vaccines and go I am to cattle but I think sub queue always in goats and so just be sure to follow what the label says and if you're buying different vaccines at different times reread the label and make sure you're doing what it says. Yeah always follow the label. Don't say oh well this says this amount for a cow and doesn't say anything for goats so I'm just going to give half a CC just follow the label but definitely I would link toward sub queue injections on pretty much any vaccine unless the label says otherwise. That brings up a question I have for you. You can buy CD&T in a 10 mil bottle or you can buy it in like a 50 mil bottle or a bigger one so you probably know what the next question is going to be. You have to use the entire bottle once you start using it or can you use can you buy a big bottle and use that like all through kidding season. So the right answer they're pretty much all going to say use it as soon as you first puncture it's. Hopefully they all say that. With that said I do try to buy kind of a small ish size so I'm usually going to end up with like a 50 dose or something like that. that and I'm using it on everybody but always use a clean needle make sure that the top is clean don't be letting it sit out in the sunlight or out of refrigeration or anything like that I mean I always have my vaccine in a cooler if I'm pulling it up always just using a clean needle every single goat gets a clean needle to drop the vaccine and then I give it to that goat and that goat only and so there's a lot of little rules the label is still going to say using entire contents with first function so that's what I need. Yeah I agree that that you really should try to use the smaller dose bottles I know the bigger ones just seem cheaper but I can't imagine it's more than a nickel or a dime cheaper per dose in the long run when you're buying a 50 versus a 10 dose bottle and so I really try to encourage people to buy the smaller dose bottles and use them over over that time but it also is going to be highly dependent on how they treat it like I said if they're walking out to the milk room and it's just sitting on the cabinet for an hour while they're vaccinating those going through I don't know that I would save that bottle but if you're conscientious about it it's in a cooler with an ice pack you pull it out to get your dose and put it back in it's staying the proper temperature you're keeping things clean then you could probably get it to go longer but if you're gonna if you're not gonna treat it well you should probably throw it away and get it in one. So one last thought and I just want to make sure this is right here we always change needles between goats correct when giving a CD&T. Always. Okay. Okay. That's all. All right. You heard it here on the note yet exclusively here. We don't have anything else. Dr. Burton, Dr. Jackson thank you so much for joining us this week. Thanks for having us. Thank you guys. It was really good. Yes and where can the listeners find out more information about your herds and your practices as well. We'll start with Dr. Burton and Dr. Jackson. We are on Facebook you can find me personally at Yolanda Patterson Burton or you can find my animal hospital it's Patterson Animal Hospital we are in Stoel, Oklahoma and our Facebook page for our herd is Cherry Tree Farm Dairy Goat. So I'm on Facebook. I'm Katie Jackson and my practice is some helpful central Kentucky small reminit veterinary services and I also have a website that's just kygoatvet.com and I have a farm Facebook page that's white rock farm WB. Awesome. Thank you ladies so much for being part of our goat gav this week and we really appreciate the education I know that that it's always good to know why we do things and you know the science behind it so I feel like that we've got a good a good hold on that tonight. Thank you listeners for joining us this week and always we will catch you on the next one. You You You You You You You You You You You You You [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]