Buying good quality feed is a lot cheaper than buying good medicine. The first line of defence against disease is the quality and quantity of feed that the animals are given.

Good feed ensures that the animal remains in a good condition and strong enough to combat infections and illness. But what makes a good quality feed?

Obviously, the farmer needs to ensure that the feed contains enough proteins and other nutrients, but the feed also needs to be consistent. This is often neglected. Sudden changes in the composition of the goat’s diet can lead to diarrhoea, which can lead to other diseases in the flock.

Goats can be kept healthy by:

•Ensuring that they have access to enough feed of the correct quality.

•Ensuring they have access to clean water.

•Following a vaccination programme against common diseases.

•Keeping internal and external parasites under control.

•Keeping sick goats separate so that disease does not spread to healthy goats.

•Making sure that any goats introduced into the flock are disease-free.

•Sheltering goats from adverse weather.

Animals that do not spend too much of their energy on getting warm or staying cool are better enabled to recover from disease. It is therefore wise to provide sick animals with shade and shelter from wind and rain to keep them warm and comfortable.

If a goat does get sick it needs to be treated. It is essential to keep record of goats that you treat because if a particular animal gets sick often, it should be culled as it is a weak individual costing you money and also passing on bad genes to the next generation.

A sick goat shows the following symptoms:

•It will appear dull and listless.

•It may have obvious symptoms of sickness such as coughing or diarrhoea.

•It may not follow the rest of the flock when they go out to graze.

•It may have an abnormal temperature – either too high or too low.

One sick animal can contaminate healthy animals. This can result in the sick animal getting re-infected after it has recovered. Sometimes when a farmer has many sick animals, or a neighbour has sick animals, it means that the occurrence of disease in the area is very high. It is extremely difficult to keep individual animals healthy when there is a lot of disease around. Farmers who are aware of common diseases in their area need to think strategically about how to combat these diseases as a community rather than trying to just keep their own animals healthy. This is also true of parasites that cause diseases, like ticks and worms. If some animals have a lot of ticks or worms, it is difficult to stop the ticks and worms spreading to all the animals in a herd.

Ticks are common disease carriers. This is why animals often get sick in early summer when there are a lot of ticks. Once the animal’s immune system is used to the ticks again, the animal can fight the tick diseases.

Livestock owners in areas where the heartwater disease occurs must be very careful about buying animals from other areas, because if they come from areas that do not have heartwater, the animals’ immune systems will not recognise the disease and cannot protect them. The animal’s immune system is influenced by the diseases that the animal has been exposed to. If an animal was exposed to a disease and managed to survive, the natural immune system will fend off future infections of the particular disease.

One way of getting an animal to have contact with a weakened form of the disease without killing the animal, is vaccination. Some vaccinations must be given every year while others need only be given once in an animal’s life.

Another way for the animal to develop its immune system is through the infant animal being born with some of its mother’s immune cells. Infant livestock also develop stronger immune systems if they suckle their mothers very soon after birth to drink the first milk called colostrum, which is filled with the mother’s immune cells (antibodies).

Vaccination

Farmers need to be aware of common diseases that affect goats in their area and then follow an appropriate vaccination programme. Vaccination is only possible for certain diseases. With these diseases, you can give the healthy animal an injection that will prevent it from contracting a particular disease. This is different to treating an animal once it is sick.

One of the key vaccines you can give a goat is Multivax P

• Multivax P will control Pasteurella (lung infections), pulpy kidney, tetanus, and black quarter.

•Young goats can be injected at 4 to 5 months and again at 5 to 6 months of age.

•Adult goats: Can be treated annually at the onset of the rainy season, and followed up with a second treatment after 4 weeks.

Other vaccinations should only be given if a problem is positively identified by a veterinarian or animal health technician, for example: enzootic abortion, Brucella melitensis (also commonly called CA).

In the next edition we shall discuss common diseases that goat farmers should be aware of.

The information in this article is credited to Mdukatshani, Heifer International-South Africa and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Rural Development who published the Goat Production Handbook in 2015.