First symptoms I see are a goat that has come in very late to be milked, appears lame and is obviously ill with ears hanging and reluctant to move. I think the appearance of lameness is due to the goat trying not to bump her very tender udder with her leg. It has only ever occurred here following rain.

If you see a goat with the above, check her milk before putting on the cups. Milk will be blood stained if it is black mastitis. It will also be watery and may be offensive smelling. The udder or part of it may feel cool to touch or already have progressed to appear purplish which is difficult to see in a black skinned udder.

By the time you find the goat sick antibiotics will not help cure her. Her body is killing the bacteria and those bacteria are giving off deadly toxins which cause the goat to be sick. All you can do is supportive and preventative treatment. Support her immune system and her hydration and energy, provide pain relief and prevent further infections in other parts of her body. Also as the udder dies and sloughs off you want to prevent it getting fly blown and getting a secondary infection. I had my 5th case of this last month. The affected udder fell off 34 days after she became ill and she currently has a fast healing hole.

• You are meant to strip milk out every 4 hours but reality means you do it twice a day. This is to remove as many toxins as possible. After about 36 hours the udder hardens and has next to no milk so stripping becomes impossible. Scrub hands well before touching any other udder!!!
• Give Flunixil or Ketoprofen to decrease swelling, pain and fever. This will also make her more likely to eat and drink
• Give a vitamin injection to boost her immune system. Try anything else you know of or have that is said to help the immune system
• Antibiotic - in the last case I had I used Engemycin, 2 doses given 48 hours apart. This goat recovered very quickly and jumped out of the "sick bay" to be with her mates on the 2nd day.Give Ceton, 50ml twice daily, until she is eating properly
• Offer clean fresh water and food. Make sure she doesn't have to compete hard for food
• As the udder dies, spray it every milking with chloromide (pink spray) to keep flies off and to encourage it to dry up. It will also help prevent secondary infection where the dead udder is connected to healthy tissue.

Back in 1997 I had a 6 month old kid get black mastitis in both sides. She had developed a small udder around 3 months of age. I heard her yelling one day and went to investigate. She was standing stretched out and eventually I discovered she had swelling under her belly and on the back of her udder were two purple spots the size of a 20 cent coin each. I came back to the house to ring the vet and find out what I could do as I couldn't see any way I would be able to use an intra-mammary treatment. I can't remember what the vet said now but on returning to the kid within 20 minutes, the purple had spread to most of her udder and the swelling on the underside of her belly had increased. She was absolutely screaming in agony by this time so I asked Tony to put her down. I couldn't see any other way to stop her pain and I thought she could never be a productive member of the herd.

I have taken photos of my latest victim of black mastitis which you can see by Clicking Here. A new page will open, simply close it to return to this page.