Mindy playing last weekend Photo by Lori Eanes

I noticed a couple of days ago that Mindy seemed a bit depressed. It’s been raining a lot so the kids haven’t been able to get out and play, but even so Mork is up and about and hopping up on things and being active – his latest goal is to become a pirate goat by climbing onto my shoulder much like our pirate cat, Jack. Mindy, however, simply spends most of her time sleeping. And then I saw it – a bit of bloody poo on her butt. I know what that means. Then I also noticed that she was standing on her own with her back hunched – a sign of the dreaded illness, coccidiosis.

Coccidiosis. I’ve lost chickens to it. I’ve saved chickens from it. With our chicks we have a specific management protocol for dealing with it as organically as possible – meaning we don’t feed medicated feed to control it, but rather expose them to it as soon as possible so they develop some immunity to it early on. We do this by keeping the brooder in the barn area where our adult chickens have frequented and having the brooder floorless so they are on the ground from day one. If they do start to show symptoms then we treat with Sulmet in their drinking water.

Coccidia, which causes coccidiosis, is a protozoan parasite. It’s naturally found in the soil and I know we have it. Different animal species their own coccidia species that only affects them (though sheep coccidia can affect goats). So the coccidia that has affected our chickens won’t affect our goats. That said, most goats carry it anyways and only when it causes illness is it something that really needs to be dealt with.

Fortunately the treatment for chickens can also be used for goats so we have it on hand and were able to start treating her immediately. The only primary difference is that we drench her full strength Sulmet so we can control the dose. For more info on treating coccidiosis you can visit this page.

So far she’s responding well to treatment. Her poo is no longer bloody, though it’s still a bit softer than it should be. She’s a lot more active too. She has just a couple more days of treatment and should be all better. We will then treat both her and Mork as a preventative on the schedule from the above linked page.

As much as I hate all this rain, it’s helped force us to pay extra attention to what’s going on with everyone so we were able to catch it early.

Tags: chickens, goats