FARM| TAO   /     Episode #2: The Secret of the Head Pressing Goat

Episode #2 Transcript

Hello, and welcome to podcast two of the FARM | TAO podcast.

I’m your host, Dr. Casey Damron, practicing veterinarian and co-founder of PET | TAO Holistic Pet Products.

Today, we’re going to be discussing the head pressing goat.

This is basically a neurologic condition that affects goats and something that I’ve seen fairly frequently over my past 20 years of practice.

If you have goats on the homestead, there’s a good chance that at some point during the lifespan of the goat herd that you’re going to have some come down with some form of neurologic disease.

When I say neurologic disease, I’m talking about symptoms that include anything from depression to maybe uncoordinated muscle movements or staggering around, possibly convulsions and seizures.

They may be blind or have nystagmus.

Nystagmus means that the eyes are uncontrollably either going back and forth, up and down or in a rotational movement.

The most common symptom that I’ve heard from my clients is head pressing.

Basically this means that the animal’s going to stand next to a wall or maybe in a corner and just press their head into the wall.

This can go on for minutes and even hours.

All these neurologic symptoms have a long list of possible diagnosis.

There are two that are much more common than the rest.

Those two include listeriosis and Polioncephalomalacia.

Let’s talk a little bit about each of these diseases.

Both of these diseases can be linked to management issues and nutrition problems.

First, let’s begin with listeriosis.

Listeria is a bacteria.

It can be found in the soil, in the water, moldy hay, silage, many different areas.

It’s kind of ubiquitous in nature.

The disease that it prevents is mostly seen in the winter or early spring.

This can mostly be contributed to the low availability of the pasture for them to graze on.

They’re grazing very close to the soil, maybe picking up some of the soil or possibly getting into the moldy hay that can be fed at the time to try to get them through the winter time.

There’s two forms of listeriosis.

One causes abortions, and the other one causes neurologic symptoms.

Today, we’re going to focus on the one that causes the neurologic symptoms. The neurologic symptoms can progress pretty quickly.

From the time the animal picks up the bacteria until the time its symptoms are seen can be as little as a day or so.

Treatment with appropriate antibiotics is crucial to getting them over this.

Treatment quickly is also crucial.

Recovery can be seen within a day or so, if using the appropriate antibiotics, but if you’ve waited and the neurologic symptoms have progressed and the animal is pretty severe as far as the condition goes, then the treatment may be prolonged, and you may only get partial recovery.

They may be unsteady on their feet to possibly blind for the rest of their life.

The crucial thing here is antibiotics can correct this disease if it’s caught early in the process.

Polioncephalomalacia, on the other hand, is not a bacterial infection.

It’s not an infection at all really.

It does have something to do with bacteria, but it’s not an infection of the brain.

Rather, it’s a lack of the availability of thiamine or Vitamin B1 in order for the brain to uptake energy, carbohydrates or sugars, this thiamine is necessary for these cells to be able to take up the energy and utilize them.

What happens is the thiamine gets reduced in the body, and I’ll go over the ways that happens in a moment, but the thiamine gets reduced and thus gets the death of brain cells, because they can’t utilize the sugars that they need in order to have their normal function.

The question becomes what causes this lack of thiamine.

This is where the nutrition plays a role and possibly what the animals are getting into, their environment, things like that.

Basically, this thiamine is produced in one of the stomachs called the rumen of the goat.

The normal bacterial populations that coincide in there, or exist in the rumen, help to produce the thiamine that’s necessary for the brain to use the sugars.

Anything that alters the function of the rumen, which is also the stomach, or alters the bacteria that’s normally found there, will also alter the thiamine production.

Some things that can cause the altered bacterial population are increased grain ratios, or rations.

If you feed too much grain, it will change the pH within the stomach and therefore lead to death or normal bacteria that were able to produce thiamine.

You get a change from your good bacteria to your bad bacteria, kind of the same thing that may happen with a colon in animals, and they get diarrhea as a result.

In this case, it’s happening in the stomach. Anything that alters the normal bacteria will alter the thiamine.

Like I said, feeding too much grain is the biggest culprit.

Other causes may include moldy hay, not enough roughage for the normal function of the rumen, which usually happens in the springtime when there’s lush green pastures, and the grass that they’re eating may be full of water.

Then, owners a lot of times will give grain supplementation, and the combination of this lush green pasture and the grain supplementation ends up affecting the pH balance in there, which affects your bacterial populations.

There’s also been some links to dewormers and other parasitic treatments that may cause alterations in the bacterial populations within the rumen.

That’s something you need to be concerned about if you’re on a regular deworming protocol, is watching your forage and your hay that you’re providing.

Make sure you’re giving enough of that and not too much of your grain.

Recently, there’s been some research that shows that there may be some problems with sulfur in the diet as well.

Sulfur can come from the water or possibly in the rations that we feed, so if you’re having problems with these neurologic symptoms and you can’t figure out exactly what’s going on, the sulfur may be something that we need to look into and measure the sulfur content in your water and your feeds that you’re feeding.

Once symptoms are seen with Polioncephalomalacia, the treatment would be injections of Vitamin B1. If caught early, like with listeriosis, the response could be as soon as 24 hours.

However, if the disease has progressed to severe symptoms, the response may be delayed or even impartial, meaning you may have lifelong problems just as you would with the listeria.

In conclusion, both polio and listeriosis are usually management and nutritional issues.

The main way to prevent them is not to overfeed grain.

Make sure they have good quality source of roughage available, meaning your hay.

Make sure it’s not moldy.

If need be, you may need to measure the sulfur content in your water and your feeds and make sure that we’re not getting too much sulfur in there.

That will change the bacterial populations as well.

Both of these diseases, listeriosis and Polioncephalomalacia, can be treated.

I urge you if you see any of these neurologic symptoms that I’ve mentioned in your goats, please see your veterinarian as quickly as possible in order to help the animals and continue their life on the farm and keep giving you the pleasure of keeping them around and living a long, happy, healthy life.

Thank you for joining me today. If you like what you’ve heard today, please give us a rating on iTunes. Hope to see you on the next podcast.

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