# curly coat after kidding???



## kids-n-peeps (Aug 24, 2009)

My nigi/pygmy cross had a normal coat when we got her. Over the past few years, if she has gotten wet it might become slightly wavy. Since kidding in April, it is nearly curly. Now if it gets wet, it looks like a perm . . . 

Anyone else see anything like this before?


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## Epona142 (May 26, 2008)

Yup, I just made a post about this in Mini section. I have a doeling who's developed ringlets like that. Weird stuff! Waiting on new batteries to try to get a picture.


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## AlaskaBoers (May 7, 2008)

same thing here.


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## liz (Oct 5, 2007)

All of my girls get curly when wet...and after Bailey kidded, she lost all of her hair while she was shedding her winter coat, it came in as shiny black as ever but the ends across her sides have a curl to them.


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## jdgray716 (Aug 8, 2008)

This is normal for some coats. My Daphne in the winter gets a long curly coat. The longer the curlier. My kids right after birth have this when they are wet or just drying. I think you are fine it is more then likly due to the wet and possible length as well.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

Lots of things can be a factor in curly coats...external parasites (lice), mineral deficiencies, even internal parasites.. What does the skin underneath look like? Dry and flaky would be my guess...

Was the doe dewormed after kidding? There's a phenomenon called "periparturient rise" that's basically an EXPLOSION in the number of barberpole eggs expelled around the time of kidding.. Barberpoles have the ability to lie dormant in a goat while she's gestating, and when her kidding hormones kick in (the milk hormone, to be precise), the barberpoles absolutely ignite and begin cranking out millions and millions of eggs a day.....ya know, so they can infect her kids. 

:/

To make that many eggs, the worms gotta feed...and when they feed, they drain mama. So, if she wasn't wormed, do it now, and do it with something that kills barberpole worms in your area.

Also, if she's just kidded, mineral could very well be an issue.. Growing kids suck everything mama's got, including mineral. Our goats, for the most part, came out looking like CRAP after they kidded -- but the kids looked FANTASTIC! lol 

Mamas had rough, dry-looking, curly coats, dry and flaky skin, faded colors, etc.. Part of it, I think, was an external parasite situation that had gone more or less undetected to that point, but a lot of it -- most of it, I'd say -- was just the result of being drained dry of mineral by the growing kids.

If it's lice, a product called CyLence is pretty good. It's a pour-on synthetic pyrethrum, but it won't burn them up like some pour-on treatments do. Dosage is 1ml/25lbs.. Helps a bit with flies, too.. I usually make sure to put that last drop right between where their horns are/would be. 

Red Cell might be in order here, as well, if it's mineral related.. Common dosage I've seen is 15ml/day for a week for adults.. Red Cell is basically just concentrated liquid minerals and vitamins.. 

We treated with CyLence and a couple of our slicked back down a bit...not so bad in the 'ringlet' department now as they had been, but still wavy and faded. Everybody always gets wormed within 12-24 hours after they kid.

I'm probably also going to pick one out and hit her with Red Cell for a week, just to see if that shows improvement.. If so, everybody gets it.


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## liz (Oct 5, 2007)

cmjust....I'm curious, with the curly coat indicating so many different issues that could be wrong, I know my goats aren't wormy as I do fecals each month on them and they all look good as far as body weight goes, of course the exception being my pygmy buck at this point. I checked fecals 2 days after each of my does kidded and never saw any barberpole or any other parasite so I don't worm when they kid or even on a schedule for that matter...If I was to see an issue going on or even see anything in the fecals I would treat ASAP....The curly coat with my doe is something I'm attributing to her genetics, she's a pygmy/nigi cross and I have had 2 pygmy does with fuzzy soft coats as well so there are times when something that could be seen as an issue with parasites or mineral deficiencies could just end up being the way the goat is. I have 6 does together with an amazing large area of space for them so maybe thats why parasites haven't been a problem in my herd? IDK Also, was wondering if you think that the RedCell would help my pygmy buck regrow his coat? I've been unable to get him shaved down and scrubbed as I want to do to help him but did wonder exactly how much Red Cell would be appropriate for a 45# 6 year old pygmy. TY


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

liz said:


> cmjust....I'm curious, with the curly coat indicating so many different issues that could be wrong, I know my goats aren't wormy as I do fecals each month on them and they all look good as far as body weight goes, of course the exception being my pygmy buck at this point. I checked fecals 2 days after each of my does kidded and never saw any barberpole or any other parasite so I don't worm when they kid or even on a schedule for that matter...If I was to see an issue going on or even see anything in the fecals I would treat ASAP
> ...
> I have 6 does together with an amazing large area of space for them so maybe thats why parasites haven't been a problem in my herd? IDK


Stocking rates definitely play a big role in parasite problems.. Keeping a goat's nose off the ground, so to speak, is arguably the most effective way to handle parasite problems. Eggs come out with feces, hatch in about 5 days, and the larva crawls up a wet blade of grass and waits to be eaten -- but they typically don't crawl up more than about 4"-6", and they don't live long unless conditions are perfect.

Where you run into problems is when you're overstocked, everybody's eating really close to the ground, and they can't avoid grazing the same areas where someone pooped about a week ago.. Add warm, humid conditions where the grass stays wet longer and you've got a recipe for ongoing parasite problems.

My personal opinion is that goats are natural browsers for a reason...worm larva aren't very good at climbing trees. lol

If you have a huge containment area, it makes perfect sense that you don't have a big parasite problem. They're able to eat higher off the ground, and they're able to avoid areas that have been contaminated with someone else's worm larva..  And if you don't have wormy goats on account of how they're kept, then it makes perfect sense that there's nothing there to crank out eggs at or around the time they kid.





liz said:


> ....The curly coat with my doe is something I'm attributing to her genetics, she's a pygmy/nigi cross and I have had 2 pygmy does with fuzzy soft coats as well so there are times when something that could be seen as an issue with parasites or mineral deficiencies could just end up being the way the goat is.


Absolutely could be genetics...else, we wouldn't have Angoras. 

Generally, though, most people notice a *change* in coat and start wondering "What's going on here?!?" In those situations -- and in my opinion -- it's usually due to some type of environmental factor like internal or external parasites, mineral deficiencies, feed quality, etc.. Or any combination thereof..



liz said:


> Also, was wondering if you think that the RedCell would help my pygmy buck regrow his coat? I've been unable to get him shaved down and scrubbed as I want to do to help him but did wonder exactly how much Red Cell would be appropriate for a 45# 6 year old pygmy. TY


The most common dosage I've seen referred to is 15ml/day for a week in standard-sized adult goats. Does, most generally.. When I think "adult goat," I think somewhere in the 125-150lb range.. So, it's somewhere at or below 1ml/10lbs..

I reckon I'd try maybe 5ml/day for a week and see if that generates a little improvement, if he were here..

Bear in mind that I've heard differing opinions on Pygmy goats and copper...some folks say they need copper just like every other goat, and some folks say they're more copper sensitive than other goats. I don't own Pygmies, so I don't really know. What I do know is that Red Cell contains copper sulfate at a rate of 1.2mg/ml, so giving 5ml would provide 6mg of copper sulfate/day.

The only other thing that jumps out at me in Red Cell is magnesium, which is a component of the urinary calculi which most commonly affects goats ("struvite", a.k.a. magnesium ammonium phosphate). A 5ml dose would provide a scant 3.33mg/day of magnesium, though.. Maybe throw him a little extra alfalfa hay while you're treating with Red Cell, just to get the blood calcium levels up and keep his gut from taking in quite so much extra phophorus in the meantime. I'm sure that's totally unnecessary, but I probably would just to make myself feel better about providing extra dietary magnesium to a buck.. Having dealt with UC in the past, I'm **way** overly cautious about it these days. lol

FWIW, I just looked something up in the book "Goat Medicine" about copper.. It says "oral copper sulfate" can be used at a rate of 1.5g/head/week on bred does to avoid swayback in their kids.. That's > 200mg/head/day, but the question I would have is whether "oral copper sulfate" is a 'percentage'-type *product* we're assumed to be familiar with (like the 21.5% Copper Sulfate powder labeled for chickens, for instance) or whether they're talking about basically *pure* copper sulfate (like the Roebic root killer). If they're talking about the 21.5% stuff, you're looking more like 40mg/head/day for adult bred does, which are probably close to 3x your buck's weight and being sucked dry by growing kids..

Still, even at the "percentage" dose of 40mg/day, if you divide that by 3, you're looking at 13mg/day.. If you cut that in HALF (...totally arbitrary...) to account for the buck not being a BRED doe, you're looking at 6.5mg/day, which is more than he'd get from Red Cell.

Just sayin'...be your own judge.


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## AlaskaBoers (May 7, 2008)

well my curly coated doe is now shedding, into a shiny one  yes! she'll look so much better. i can understand them wanting to cling onto them, it's 40F here.. dang rain


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