Thought you guys might be interested to see this. I noticed Fiona (saanen goatling) with a dirty mouth, on inspection she had a heap of awns from the wheat hay sticking into her gum under her upper lip. I removed them with a pair of surgical tweezers and flushed the wound with saline and gave an antibiotic injection. Where they were digging in is actually ulcerated and looks like a raised circle about the diameter of your finger and raised probably 1/4 inch from the gum. She's locked in a pen and she's off the wheat hay until the mouth heals. Unfortunately this is one of the things that can happen when you feed awned wheat hay - as opposed to 'grazing' wheat which is awnless. Normally they heal up pretty quickly and have no recurring problems. Its interesting to note that goats that get this never go off their food or lose weight at all, and I've seen much much worse cases than this one - the worse I saw, 90% of the does mouth would have been ulcerated and full of awns.
wow.....that stuff sure hid an ouch spot......poor thing.....I know it will heal up.... but man that's gotta hurt.... :shocked:
