Goat Vaccination Time

One of the great things about goat people is the level of collaboration and cooperation that exists between them. One of the people in the goat community is a breeder of Boer goats. She had bought a bottle of Glanvac 6-in-1 (which contains Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis (ovis), Clostridium perfringens type D, Cl. tetani, Cl. novyi type B and Cl. septicum and a purified formol culture of Cl. chauvoei). These come in bottles of 100ml, 250ml and 500ml. These volumes are too large for most of us and we would be throwing a lot of it away. Plus, it seems that Pfizer has stopped selling Glanvac in 100ml bottles. It’s 2.5ml per goat, so I’d need 100 goats to use a bottle and it has a shelf life of 30 days after it has been opened. It makes good sense to use what you need and try to sell the rest to other goaties. The particular breeder measures out the dose into a syringe with the appropriate needle, so $3.00 per syringe makes it very easy.

The last time that I vaccinated the goats, I only had two. Holly and Minnie were both very easy to vaccinate, I had done my goat husbandry course so I was pretty confident that I could get it all done with the least hassle. Holly and Minnie had other ideas. We didn’t have a milking stand then and we did it all in the field. At one point, the needle shot off the syringe and I had to scrabble around to find the needle amongst the grass. We had to wrestle with the goats with one of us holding the goat by the collar, while the other was straddling the goat making skin tents to inject. Once the needle was in, the goats were very accommodating. After the injection, both Holly and Minnie developed subcutaneous lumps from the vaccine, so I was advised to try injecting in the skin behind the front elbow.

This time, four goats and a milking stand. Much easier … right? Well it all went pretty well until the last goat came under the needle.

First was Minnie, straight up onto the milking stand. She knew what was what. Probably, her experience being put into the milking stand for an extra feed while being milked when she had kidded made her very keen to get to the food. Make a little tent from the skin behind the elbow, jab, plunge and rub. No problems and no needle going right through squirting vaccine onto the coat. Minnie didn’t even flinch.

Darius was next. Pretty much the same as Minnie except that he didn’t like the jab.

Holly … what a champion. When the food was in front of her, I think we could have hung hot coals from her earlobes and she wouldn’t have been phased (I am NOT suggesting that this would be good goat husbandry).

Daphne was where it all came unstuck. I had put the full syringe in my jacket pocket so that I could wrangle her because she refused to get up onto the milking stand. No amount of food was getting her into the stanchion. So, I lifted her up and got her to the food bucket then put my hand into my pocket … my pocket was wet … sticky and wet. Argh! The plunger had plunged while the syringe was in my pocket.

Now I need to go back out to my friends goat stud and get another syringe for Daphne. Such fun.