# Injured/Infected Wattle how to treat



## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

I have only one goat with wattles and I just noticed that one of them was hard and crusty. The other one is normal, pliable, etc. I took her temp and it was normal, 102.8. I also handled the wattle and it did not seem to be painful to her. 

I am wondering what this could be. My suspicion is mosquito bites or a spider bite, but I have no experience with this. I wiped the whole surface of her wattle with an alcohol swab. What else should I do?


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

could you take a picture of it?..sometimes waddles get whats called a waddle cyst..they are harmless but can get pretty big..but if it burst could cause the waddle to be crusty from dried goop...have you seen any lump on it at all? a small one might go unnoticed if its near the top. i would give it a good cleaning and look closely , see if there was a cyst that burst...waddle cyst normally return even when lanced..I have several goats with waddles and only ever had one buck with a cyst..again..they are harmless ...not at all CL


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

I don't know that a pic would help much. It looks completely normal, no swelling or anything. I wouldn't have noticed except I was loving on her and petting her. It wouldn't show in a pic, but there was crusted matter beneath the hair on the wattle. I tried to find a source of the crust but could not. It is normal looking but when squeezed is very hard.


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## Texaslass (May 15, 2013)

That does sound like a waddle cyst to me. I had been meaning to talk about that on here sometime; we had a doeling that was born with waddle cysts. It was a little disturbing at first, though I got used to it. Sometimes I would try to squeeze them out a little when they got big, but it seemed to hurt her, and I was hoping they would go away, but they never did.  

It seems strange to me that they don't go away. :shrug:


We needed up selling that doeling, but not because of that - I actually wanted to keep her anyway, but we had too many kids. The man that bought one of our others wanted her so badly that we went ahead and gave in and sold her. It was probably good, lol, because we had too many.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

humm, it could be she injured it or another goat was nibbling on it ( mine do that) I would at this point keep a watch...as long as she is doing well other wise....


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

Huh. Well I would just bring her in to the vet when I do a fecal this week, but I am not at all confidant in their diagnostic abilities after they tried to say a mouth/jaw abscess on my one month old doeling was CL and were completely wrong.


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

Ok HappyBleats. I figure as long as her temp is good I won't worry about infection. If I see otherwise it is vet time for her.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

> It seems strange to me that they don't go away.


They can be as small as a pea or as big as a gulf ball..no they dont ever go away. Some lance them but they will grow back...some will remove the waddle at birth but if they are to get a waddle cyst they will still get one even after removing the waddle...as I said I have several with waddles..only ever had one born with a cyst..by the time he was four months old it was gulf ball size ..One thing I have not seen is one getting a cyst later in life...I have always thought they are born with them...unless the waddle got injured causing a cyst?? they are a mystery...but I do like the look of waddles lol...


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

thats sounds like a good plan...I bet she will be just fine.....


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

Interesting. Delphine is now 4 months old. She was most definitely not born with a cyst. I have noticed no irregularity with her wattles until today, and I try to check them all over every day when they eat grain.


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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

Could she have scraped it sticking her head through the fence perhaps?


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

No, all of our fence is no-climb 2" by 4". I am really leaning towards spider bite...


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

If you fear spider bite..benadryl will help with any reaction she may have...5 cc ofr kids, 15-20cc for adults


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## Texaslass (May 15, 2013)

happybleats said:


> humm, it could be she injured it or another goat was nibbling on it ( mine do that) I would at this point keep a watch...as long as she is doing well other wise....


 Forgot to say that Ruby's cysts were almost always leaking a bit; there was usually a little bit of crusty residue around them.



> They can be as small as a pea or as big as a gulf ball..no they dont ever go away. Some lance them but they will grow back...some will remove the waddle at birth but if they are to get a waddle cyst they will still get one even after removing the waddle...as I said I have several with waddles..only ever had one born with a cyst..by the time he was four months old it was gulf ball size ..One thing I have not seen is one getting a cyst later in life...I have always thought they are born with them...unless the waddle got injured causing a cyst?? they are a mystery...but I do like the look of waddles lol...


Her's got to be almost golf ball sized, not quite. I had read about how even if you remove the waddle, the cyst will remain; I'm kind of glad we didn't keep her- It would've always bothered me to not be able to fix it. 

I found a picture of her- for some reason, I think it's the ONLY picture we have of her.  You can kind of see the bulge at the base of one of the waddles there. That was before they got very bad, though.


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## Texaslass (May 15, 2013)

Did you ever decide if it was a wattle cyst, or a bug bite?


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

I'm pretty sure a spider bit it a couple times. It has started to soften and go back to normal.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

good, glad its doing better...


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## MoKa-Farms (Jun 19, 2013)

FarmerInaDress said:


> Huh. Well I would just bring her in to the vet when I do a fecal this week, but I am not at all confidant in their diagnostic abilities after they tried to say a mouth/jaw abscess on my one month old doeling was CL and were completely wrong.


Did the lump look like this?


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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

umm, that goat doesn't even have waddles?


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## FarmerInaDress (Mar 15, 2013)

No, there was no lump. Her waddle was hard, instead of pliable as it usually is and there were crusty areas as if they had been leaking a bit of fluid. 

Update: Her waddle that was bothered is now fine, BUT now the other one is now hard and crusty. I am pretty sure it is some kind of bug getting her, be it spider or mosquito (they are out of control right now). On the one that healed the hair eventually came off around the bite sites. Poor thing. I gave her some benadryl yesterday and washed it with alcohol, but beyond that I don't think there is much I can do. : (


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