Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Trimming Hooves with Dr. Gosia Zobel
Join us for a discussion about goat hoof care with Dr. Gosia Zobel, Animal Welfare Programmes Coordinator at Companion Animals New Zealand and Research Director at EthicoNZ.
In this episode Dr. Zobel discusses normal goat hoof confirmation, care, and problems with a focus on laminitis.
The papers covered in this months episode can be found at the following links:
The Development of a Hoof Conformation Assessment for Use in Dairy Goats - https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/11/973
Seeing beyond gait: A case study identifying chronic laminitis in 3 goats - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921448823001645
Evaluating the long-term conformation and hoof growth effects of starting hoof trimming at 5 months of age in New Zealand dairy goats - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030222007354
Evaluating the immediate effects of hoof trimming on dairy goat hoof conformation and joint positions - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11259-023-10273-0
If your company or organization would like to sponsor an episode or if you have questions about today's show, email Office@AASRP.org
Hello and welcome to the next edition of Boz and Bleats. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Gosha Zobel, a scientist that runs a research consultancy in New Zealand. She works with several animal production industries in New Zealand and internationally. She is also currently the Welfare Science Program Coordinator at Companion Animals in New Zealand, Which, if I understand correctly, is a non profit in New Zealand that supports animal welfare. For those of you that may need a quick reminding, animal welfare is not the same as animal rights. Welfare science focuses on ensuring animals in our care receive the best possible care and live a good life regardless of their role. Everyone who works with animals should very much be for animal welfare in all species that we love, raise, consume, treat when they're sick, or gain products from. It's great to see you, Dr. Zobel. Thanks for chatting with us today.
Gosia:I'm so happy and honored to have been asked to contribute to the amazing work that you guys do. So thank you.
Sarah:Awesome. So I always like to start with a little bit of history. Dr. Sobel, please give us a background where you went to school, where you grew up, all of that. We never, you're the first to get international guests on Boz and Bleats. But honestly, if you are in the small ruminant world and you're looking at medications, research. So much of it is done internationally both in Europe and over in Australia and New Zealand, because you guys just have so many more small ruminants than we do, at least per area of space. And so really we do need to look abroad for research. All of these countries are way ahead of us in the United States on animal welfare, pretty much. So give us your background. Let's hear where you're from. Sounds good.
Gosia:Honestly, if I go all the way back, I'm originally from Poland which is where the name stems from. And then progressively made my way over to North America with my family immigrated into New York, actually, and then popped up to Peterborough, Canada in Ontario. That's where I actually got introduced to goats at a really young age. We first got them as a companion to horses. But in my teens, I thought it was a great entrepreneurial idea to start breeding goat kids. I was probably the only 16 year old girl showing up to the sales yards with goats. Piled in the back of my Honda Civic I was sort of reflecting on that the other day and all funniness aside, I think that was the moment where I thought one day I'll probably be working in animal welfare when I was pulling up and dropping off these goat kids at the sale yards, there would be little Snickers and stuff. from the workers there because I'd be bringing my own extra hay and bedding for the goats I just knew that one day I would want to work with, with animals, but also people to improve the way that animals were being treated. Cared for. Fast forward a couple decades after that I ended up with a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and I was really focused on goat and cow behavior specifically around dry off and the transition period and that sort of thing. And ultimately that led me to New Zealand because at the time this is 10 years ago now the government had a huge push for dairy goat research the program I was leading was 8 million over five years, dedicated to goat welfare, which was phenomenal. But then unfortunately, the government lost interest. And after that funding ran out I eventually just decided, you know what, I'm going to be able to make a difference if I focus on sort of smaller clients, smaller pots of money. And that's what I've been doing in the last year and a half. I've been focusing on a business with my good friend that has an animal ethics background, and we've been having a great time doing science. All over the show lots of behavior studies and specifically a lot of them have been focusing on goats. So yeah.
Sarah:Awesome. I love that. Two of my favorite researcher research in this world is welfare studies that make the animals happier and make the farmers money and environmental studies that help the planet stay healthy and save the farmer money at the time. If we can in the animal world combine all of that, like Those are the best things in the world. When it's good for the planet, good for the animal, good for the pocketbook. When those things come together, and I find most animal welfare things. Do like increase production, make the farmers like they're so worth it. So, okay, let's jump in. We haven't even said what we're talking about today. We're talking about goat hooves which is awesome. So we're going to talk about hoof trimming and some like normal Kind of behaviors and goats get a tribute to hoof growth and hoof care. And some stuff like that. I really enjoyed, I read three different papers of yours in preparing for this and they were all super interesting. So I was seeing before, like I live in the pet world the pet goat world, but we have a lot of people who listen, ASRP members who work in the goat dairy world, and I, most of this will apply to sheep, right? Pretty not the behaviors of stuff. What'd you say?
Gosia:Yeah, it's tricky because I feel like sheep there's been a lot more breeding to make sure that their hooves aren't as prone to overgrowing and getting Infections and stuff but yes, I mean from a trimming perspective probably I don't know there has been the same level of research And talking about the hoof angles changing and that sort of thing I'm not aware of that having been done in sheep, but I guess the general principles will probably apply
Sarah:Okay. So why don't we first kind of jump into the paper about just like Normal kind of activities of goats. Yeah that I think is awesome because it's basically like This is what goats love to do. Let's try to give them the option of what they love to do, even if you have a thousand goats, just like how we've moved away from stall barns and cows because cows need to groom and do all that. And now that we know more about their behavior, they need to lunch to stand up all that. Like we need to bring that kind of research into the go world. Absolutely.
Gosia:Absolutely. I was, it's funny because I've, I started as I was mentioning when I first came over to New Zealand from Canada, I started thinking in that, you know, immediately in the commercial space, what can we do to improve the environment? But then I had this sort of, well, it was a very fortuitous type of situation that came up for me and I was incredibly lucky to head over to the Swiss Alps with a student. And we went to the Ticino region, which is in the southern Swiss Alps. And we had the pleasure of being hosted by a farmer there that manages about a hundred goats, milking goats, in an alpine environment. And I kind of realized, you know what, we should be learning from these goats. And bringing that to the commercial space rather than just starting in the commercial space because we just saw so much of the behavior that these goats were doing that it's like, I wouldn't have even really thought to necessarily try that in the commercial space before we saw it. So my student and I followed these goats and there was about 100 goats and they kind of split themselves into herds at night. And we split them up and I followed some and my student followed some other ones. We had accelerometers on them. We had GPS on them. And we just wanted to see what they were doing. It was the best study I'd ever run because I literally just got to sit there all day and watch and write down what they were doing. I think there some key things that I came away with from that study. First of all, these goats anywhere between three and four kilometers a day. These goats were covering on their own. No one was chasing them around. In fact, The only fences that we saw were the ones that surrounded the hut to keep the goats out of where the people slept. Otherwise, the goats were, completely free range. They brought themselves down for milking once a day. They would head up several hundred meters in elevation and would be traveling, as I said, three to four kilometers a day. That in itself was a first take home for me. There had been some older research that said, just how much goats were willing to walk, but it had never been with milking goats. And that was, as I say, phenomenal to see. The other thing we saw is that most of the time during the day. They were in caves and hard surfaces, so they were spending this time, first of all, hiding because it was quite warm, but also on rocks, like they were always on rocks, even if there was fluffy grass around for them to lay on, they were on the rocks instead. And that also led to my third major observation, which was their hooves. When I asked the producer, I said, you know, like, when were they trimmed? And he went back into his memory and he actually couldn't remember. So I think he just sort of made up something because he didn't want to make it seem like he hadn't trimmed them. But he said, Oh, I don't know, five, maybe six months ago. And these hooves, I wish I could share these with your listeners because they looked like the perfect little hooves of like a four week old kid, you know, the very upright little heels and the hoof wall was perfectly attached to the sole. And they were just these little, little tiny pockets of perfect hoof. And I had, I mean, I grew up with goats and I'd never seen hooves like this before. It was just phenomenal. And I think it's because it's the activity. And, the surfaces that these goats were spending time on. And so from that study, I was able to kind of start formulating some of the other work that we were then able to, you know, think about and do in commercial systems. But yeah, it was sort of a life changing thing for me as A goat person, but also as a scientist.
Sarah:And as we were discussing before we started, like some of the takeaways that I love for this as somebody who sees pet goats and people are like, what do you think of this house? What do you think of this tiny little. Shed that I'm keeping my goats in and like me being able to say like you don't just need deep bedding like Box and they can get on and get in and get under and hide and you know Maybe your goats an introvert and it needs a little time of its own like Yeah, I love like the knowing they love caves knowing they love to hide, you know Knowing that they love to sleep on rocks, you know I think I think all of that's great and like that would not be that hard even if you have a thousand goats To put some things in there. I mean, we know they love to jump on stuff. We know they love to play you know and Not having to do hooves. You know, I, I encourage any of my goat producers, if you have ramps that your goats are walking up and down, you need to put roofing shingles or something on them to wear their hooves down. Yeah, I love that.
Gosia:Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead. We're trialing right now. I have a small herd of 20 goats here, but we're currently trialing out electrical poles. So, you know, the big concrete electrical poles that, so we had a bunch taken down in our front paddock and we cut them up and made basically like climbing ramps and they're just solid concrete. And it's amazing. Like, if they could, they'd lie on the ramps like, you know, 45 degree angle. They'd happily lie on these things. I mean, I still have to trim, you know, very few people out there are as lucky as this fellow in Tichino, Switzerland, where they're able to have the goats basically trimming their own feet. But just adding those types of surfaces. To the environment is so, so important, I think, to just let the goats sort of help us a bit in terms of maintaining their own hoots.
Sarah:Yeah, and I mean, even if they're not, you know, wearing down the, like, outer, you know, the hard surface, but keeping those soles flat, you know, the softer or the heel, I should say the heels flat that are the softer areas, you know, it just keeps them more upright. Like I just feel like all of that is really important. So, yeah, I love that. That paper was just, it was super interesting to read and guess who wouldn't want to be in the Swiss Alps watching goats, unless it was. It sounds a little cold. Was it a good time of year? At least you were there.
Gosia:It was a phenomenal time of the year. Actually it was in July, so it wasn't cold. But one, really interesting thing about that is that it was quite warm during the day, but we had temperature loggers all around and those caves that the goats were going into. were a consistent, and I apologize for using Celsius here, but they were a consistent 11 Celsius. For the entire time during the heat of the day at night, it didn't matter they were 11 or it varied to maybe 11. 1 Celsius. But it was crazy and you could just see that the goats were like, right. It's getting warm. We're going in there. And so, yeah, it's amazing. If you let goats choose where they get to spend their time, they really will tell you. I'm much more comfortable over here, right, and that's why when you were mentioning having these, you know, hidey holes or something like that, like areas that they can sort of hide out in or self segregate from other goats that are picking on them or just areas that might be more Shaded in the summertime. I think the more choice that you can offer them. They will happily take that choice
Sarah:Yeah, do we know our goats similar to cows where they think darkness is cool? You know, cause cows will like, all of them will go to the dark corner in the hot day even if they're all crutched together and like, overheat because they just think darkness is darkness.
Gosia:Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying and I've seen it like I mean dairy cows here in New Zealand are outdoors. So we see it all the time with all the cows if there's a tree they're under it. It's interesting with goats because We have a study. It's only available as a student thesis right now. It never got published but One of the things we did we went to a commercial farmer. They Graciously, let us put some outdoor space And we gave the goats sand areas outside. So they didn't have anything to graze on out there, but they just had sand that they could go and spend time in. And these bloody goats, like, they would go out there and just, you know, picture high production sonnens, big udders, just lounging in the sun. So some of them would go, we also had like little hidey areas that they could choose, so some would go into that darker space and seek out the shade. But man, one of the things we had to have conversations with this farmer about was perhaps we had to limit the time they spent time during the day outside because they had sunburned udders. They were so keen to go outside, but I think it was also, a good indicator. As well as how motivated the goats were to go outside. So animals that are indoors, right? This was the first time they'd had an opportunity to go outside. Except for when they had been kids. Right, so they let their kids go outside. But then after that they get moved indoors. And they were willing to go out there in like the heat of the sun. And they were willing to put up with the sunburn. Because they were just so motivated to be outside. So yes, I do agree with you. They do seek out shade. But not all of them.
Sarah:that's fair.
Gosia:Fair. I was just going to say the take home there is the choice aspect, right? Give them the option of both. Right. Yes, for sure. Yeah.
Sarah:And I know that's not as easy in production as it is your pet animal, but yeah, whatever you can add is great. You know, I absolutely adore the dairy farms that have some outdoor space, even if they're only, you know, grazing during their dry period, at least it's a time in their life that they're having some time to,
Gosia:live normal
Sarah:goat life. Yeah. Which paper did you want to move to next? The laminitis paper or the
Gosia:I think hoof growth, if we could do sort of the hoof growth and the trimming. So I think what's really, again, a really interesting. So I had a PhD student that was quite keen on this topic. And so we kind of systematically thought through a story for her PhD, where the first part of it really looked at. You know, obviously we have to trim but like why like why are these who's growing and how much right because nobody had really quantified that. And so we looked at 60 goats that were monitored for I know it doesn't seem like a lot of goats but for the amount of. Monitoring that had to be done. That's about all that could physically be done, but on a commercial farm 60 goats for two years and we kept the hooves were trimmed and then we were scoring with a, it looked pretty barbaric, but I swear it was, it was totally fine. We scored them with a saw and we kept putting scores on the hooves so we could see how much they were growing. And unreal, these, like in the end of this, it depended on how old they were. It also depended a little bit about their point in lactation. But on average, these hooves were growing five millimeters a month. So in four months, you've got it. You've got a full inch of growth, right? And so if you're thinking about some, you know, some farmers during my really early work when, when we did a survey of, of, of farms and over 100 farms, you know, we only had like just over 20 percent of those farms told us that they were trimming every four months. Everyone else was trimming twice a year or even once a year. So that could be somewhere between three and six centimeters of growth between trims. if you kind of put that into perspective, you get goats with these flippered hooves and they're not being touched. So that was kind of a simple take home, but I think it was really, really important for us to first establish that baseline. Incidentally, there's a sort of a follow up that I did cause I wanted to keep myself busy during our lockdown here during COVID. And so I did a bit of a case study with three goat kids. Cause that's what I had access to at the time. And I wanted to see if that hoof growth was any different. In early life, and so we followed two Saanens and one feral goat kid, and it was shocking, we found on average it was about 11 millimeters, so twice the growth that we were seeing in the older goats we were seeing at that young age, and that was so important, I think, to kind of shift, I've been sharing that, and it's really shifted some people, in terms of their thought about when they should start trimming, because, if you've got up to a centimeters of growth, starting at about four months of age, think about it, by the time they're a year old, if they haven't had a chance to maintain those hooves, if they haven't been jumping around on rocks or whatever, you could be getting several. I'm going to try to flip it, into Imperial, but several inches of growth by the time that goat is a year old. And if you start trimming then, oh my goodness, you've already probably done quite a bit of damage in terms of confirmation. Because the goats are having to compensate for these slippered, long hooves, right?
Sarah:Yeah, so that's kind of, yeah. the fact that their babies and their growth plates aren't completely developed and those little joints are just developing, I can't imagine how much more damage you're doing than if you neglect them as adults, right? Yes.
Gosia:Yeah, absolutely. And the, a great example of this work actually being taken on board is NFAC in Canada. The Canadian code of goat care basically has since been updated very recently. I think last year it was published to say that goat kids should be trimmed. No later than six months of age. And I feel like that's a huge step in the right direction. I mean, we trim here at four months of age because, you know, I just watch them. And when I look at those hooves and you see the hoof wall starting to roll over underneath and covering up the sole, basically, that's when you should start trimming, because if you don't. That's when you start compromising the hoof wall integrity, and if you let that roll over, then you're getting stuff jammed underneath there the hoof wall starts to then separate, and then you've just created this ongoing process that's So difficult to reverse. I say that from experience, like I've got some commercial goats X commercial goats, and I've tried for four years on one of them to reverse that type of growth. It's awful.
Sarah:And I mean, we don't want to completely discount genetics because some goats are going to have messed up feet. If you start trimming at four months and you look at those feet every single month, they're still, you know, they're going to get the sledge and the, all this stuff. So, I mean, Just cull those goats. Don't breed them. Yes. Don't keep the genetics going. Absolutely.
Gosia:And you know what? There's another study that I have that unfortunately we haven't been able, It's in the works. It hasn't been published yet. But we followed, on 16 farms, we followed more than 1, 200 goats. For four years, and it was unreal the farmer was arguably caring for them better because they knew they were on this study. So they were trimming very frequently and all this. Absolutely. What we had is we had goats that. We're receiving exactly the same care, but some of them, by year two, had these horrible splayed claws the goats were standing on their heels, claws were going outwards and I wish that we could have actually looked at their mums. and been like, what is the genetic component that's contributing to this? Because you could see it almost, we started taking photographs of the hooves at nine months of age, and you could start seeing it even at that point. Like, even at nine months before they'd even kitted, you saw those. So yeah, you're absolutely right about the genetics. It's part of the reason why in that little case study I mentioned, we threw in the little feral goat because that little feral. First of all, is a total lunatic. We still have her and, she, she's just, she's on everything. jumps off everything. She climbs higher than everyone else. She's on anything. And I think it's partially that behavior, but also partially genetically. When we were doing that comparison where we were photographing the hooves every month of those kids, she was probably half of the way along in terms of growth as the other two were. As the Tucson kids. And She actually went 16 months once, without being trimmed. And when I finally got to her, I was like, oh, thanks, I'll just do a little rasp. That was all I had to do. So she was sort of self maintaining, but also probably there's a genetic component. So I think we've probably been doing the age old and focusing on the number one, which is milk production, especially in the dairy realm, focusing on milk production, and maybe not thinking about the hooves so much and probably selecting for these not great hooves that you say probably should just be culled.
Sarah:Yeah, yeah. And by selecting we mean not selecting at all and not even thinking about it. Just not even noticing,
Gosia:absolutely. Go ahead.
Sarah:Here in New York, we mostly see in the pet world, Nigerian dwarfs, but the best hooves I have are my breeders who are breeding the Kikos, the more resistant, the great meat breed. They're a little psycho, but they by far have the best feed, the best parasite resistance. You know, I'm loving those. So the fact that in my practice area, they're becoming more popular. I'm like, bring it on, bring all of them on. They don't want to be my best friend when I get on the farm, but I don't care.
Gosia:It's awesome to hear. So the Kikos are actually from New Zealand. That's their origin and they are a crossbred with feral goats. So basically what I was referring to there, they're crossbred and yeah, they are incredibly hardy. Like I know of a few farmers in Saskatchewan in Canada where it goes down to minus 50 and they've got their Kikos are just frolicking around outside. You know, they can't get them in the barn.
Sarah:Oh, these are a little bit more bougie than that, but yeah, I mean, The main one of my clients that has them, she just has like calf hutches for them. And they're perfectly with that through our winter, you know, and through New York, I mean, we get pretty cold here. We have snow and they do great.
Gosia:Well, I wonder how much of the, I mean, I'm not saying that, that especially the dairy breeds be crossbreeding with, with these Kikos, but I, I just, you know, do you see anything in your area where people are saying, right? Sawn ins for dairy are great. But, maybe I should be introducing some Alpine, some Toggenberg, some Oberhausli, that sort of thing, into the Saanen line, to sort of help with the hooves. Because the Saanens, at least here, the Saanens are the ones that are notoriously poor hoof structure.
Sarah:So, I don't live in a world where people are really thinking that, the people I have that for. I wish Dr. Buckley was on with us.'cause she's done a lot with like the big dairy, You know, Wisconsin, Iowa. Right. Those are the states that have the big dairies. Yeah. And I guess it kind of depends if the dairies also care about showing and like having these nice lines. Yes. So I, I haven't seen that, but I can't tell you it's not happening somewhere out here. It would make sense, even if, you know, you could even get like a quarter Kiko or
Gosia:something in there. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. It's just,
Sarah:it's just
Gosia:hybrid.
Sarah:Especially in the South where we're having such a problem with resistance of parasites. You know, if we could bring in some of these other breeds to these dairies that could help with hooves and parasites and like other things. I don't know. It's just a thought.
Gosia:I
Sarah:think,
Gosia:yeah, I, I mean, I, I'm all for hybrid vigor. In New Zealand, the dairy cows here, they walk for kilometers. Twice a day to be milked right because everything for the most part of things outdoors here with dairy cows and they have this They call it a Kiwi cross and it's this lovely mix of there's you know There's Holstein Friesen in there, but there's Jersey. There's some Jersey. There's Ayrshire's and Gosh, these things are just, like, they're stocky little tanks that are able to walk, are able to graze, and still, you know, produce a lot of milk for their size. And I just, I kind of, I can't help but, like, reflect on the fact that You know, we're sort of in a unique place with goats where we're not giant yet with them in terms of the, you know, there are some of these really giant farms, but it's not the same, I guess, progression that we are with dairy cows. And it's like, if we just get some of the, Kind of some of the big names sort of just demonstrating that there could be benefits to doing some more of this kind of hybrid breeding and selecting for good foods and actually parasites. I think that's a great point. I hadn't really been considering that, but selecting for that. I just think we could, we could sort of nip a lot of things in the bud before they get even worse.
Sarah:Yeah, at least help in that direction,
Gosia:know.
Sarah:Move them that way. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So in this study, all of these goats, you were able to put some numbers to like typical growth which I think is good. I love having those in my back pocket as a vet. Like, you know, your goats are gonna, their hooves are going to grow, you know, about an inch a month?
Gosia:Every two and a half months.
Sarah:Okay. Put that in our back pocket so we can tell our owners that they'll grow about an inch every four months. And so, that's decent. That's enough to mess up how they're standing and how they're walking and hurt their joints.
Gosia:Yeah, absolutely. And that's actually what we followed on with. So Laura my students, her second study was actually focused on what impact do we have when we trim? And so again, she did some fun stuff where we actually had to bring in horse vets because we didn't have any of the goat people that had actually even had x ray equipment. So we brought some horse vets in on a regular basis and they helped. Again, look at these 60 goats in a standardized manner and looking at their hooves before and after trimming and doing the x rays, not just the photos of what it looks like on the outside, but what is it actually doing to those joints? And I think one of the key things, it was just unreal as to, Before they got trimmed and then a normal trimming, we had almost a 10 degree change in the heel angles. And anybody that can think, I mean, it might be hard to think about it from a goat perspective, but if you've got any, horse listeners, the last thing you ever want is to have animals walking on their heels, right? Because they start stretching all those ligaments in the, in the, in the hind end of the animal. And if you think about, you know, A goat, especially a dairy goat that's carrying so much weight back there and they're standing on their heels. It's like, oh, the confirmation issues that we see, we could actually be preventing if we just had a more standardized trimming protocol and it even impacted the way I manage my own goats right now. I've got goats that depending on their needs, they're anywhere between a four and an eight week trimming cycle the farm that we were working with where we were doing this trimming study those x rays, they were on a four month cycle. And so three times a year, and by the time we were done the study, we basically told them you need to increase that frequency. You just have to because the changes that we're seeing in these goats, it's so stressful on them. Because, you know, some of them were coming up lame after not because we were hitting anything. There was no quick that we were hitting. Blood. It was literally, because we were changing the angles on them so much. Right after trimming.
Sarah:Yeah. Yeah. I love, I don't know if you have 4 H there, but I'm big into 4 H here. And I love telling my little kids, like, I want you to lay hands on these goats once a month. And more, I want them to feel their body condition score, check their Fremontia, look at their, you know, I just want, when you have five goats, there's no reason you can't be giving a hands on. Once a month, you know, look at their feet, whatever. And I know that's not production. I understand but you know Even if you had a rotating schedule just like in the dairy world where you know That cow is going to be put on that table This many weeks after kidney or after calving or whatever and I mean I feel like if the if you milk 10 000 cows and can get it done I feel like if you milk 1000 goats, you can get it done and I know it's labor and All the things, but,
Gosia:I would say, yes, it's labor, but. you could be preventing so many things like it's actually a good preventative labor in that one study that I talked about with the over 1200 goats and 16 farms. We actually found that at nine months of age, goats that had claws that were sort of irregularly shaped, so basically, you know, when we took the photos head on, if a claw was sticking out rather than coming straight down, those goats were twice as likely to have left the herd. By their second lactation, and I'm not saying that's a causation type of thing. This is just an observational study, but, you know, there was still this aspect like what was happening, like, was there other things that were contributing probably as to why they were leaving. But the fact is, is that we did see that these animals weren't there. So it's just, I just feel like the more preventative care, I think, to hooves that we could start doing with goats, the more we could be increasing their longevity and we don't need the massive turnover of goats that some farms are seeing. and I think also From a small holder perspective, if you've got your five Nigerian dwarfs or whatever, it's like you say, it's that preventative care, you could be preventing spending hundreds of dollars having your vet out all the time. Not that I'm trying to get you out of a job, but right.
Sarah:none of us are lacking work. We don't need to be working on your feet every five weeks. Like I have plenty of work.
Gosia:Exactly.
Sarah:Yeah, but I mean, and the thing is like, and we know this from the dairy industry, your goat isn't even making, hasn't even started making you money in her first or second lactation. She's still paying you back for all the money you put into her as a kid, right? And so if you're calling her at three years old, That's a watch. She has not made you any money, right?
Gosia:Exactly. So, yeah. That preventative hoof care absolutely. That would, if somebody asked me, you know, what's the top thing that we should be rethinking in any goat herd, no matter what size, I think it is honestly hoof care.
Sarah:Yeah,
Gosia:earlier, more frequent. Those are, that's the kind of the take home. Great.
Sarah:and I saw in your paper, you like the hoof boss. This has been a big thing around here. People talking about moving to something more that's faster. Right. And you can get this in and I. Very worried about people who don't know what they're doing using it. You know, if you know how to do it, like, you can do a goat's hoof, you can do a whole goat in very little time.
Gosia:Oh yeah, like a minute of hoof. if you've kind of got it mastered. And actually an interesting thing at the very beginning of this chat, you may have mentioned trying to create sort of a flat bottom hoof and basically the heel. And one of the things that we saw with those goats, if I can bring the conversation quickly back to the Swiss goats, is they actually didn't have flat bottoms. They had quite curved hooves. And You can create that a little bit better with the hoof boss. You can sort of sculpt the heels a bit more. But yes, you bring up a very good point that if you're using, and it doesn't have to be the hoof boss, I'm not trying to advertise for anybody, but any sort of grinder. you do need to be careful and you're better off starting on the cautious side or at least have somebody such as yourself have a vet out to show you how to use those because yeah, you can do some serious damage that arguably is a lot harder to do when you're reefing away on clippers, right? Because before you do any major damage, the usually complain,
Sarah:Okay, I have a question, we're just to get down into the weeds a little bit. So I love watching the YouTube videos that people have put out for hoof care, just so I know what my clients are watching.
Gosia:Yeah. And so
Sarah:one of the big trends that I cannot stand is people coming in and just straight lobbing the toe off. And so, you know, it's have like this box. Right? In my opinion, that's like people losing their big toe. Like, that tip is their balance. Am I correct?
Gosia:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And it just, it, I think, I think it's actually perpetual. I have some amazing photos of exactly what you're talking about. And I think it perpetuates them also because you've thrown their balance. It perpetuates them standing more and more and more on their heels. So it actually then perpetuates them. Wanting to cut the toe off further, further, further, further, if I can, and yeah, it's, so we have some photos online and one of the papers that's actually about a laminitis paper, so it's not directly about trimming, but you can see how close the bones actually are, like, this is a cool thing to be able to see inside the hoof, right, for an owner. those toe bones are so close to the outside of that hoof that the more you start trimming, you are literally millimeters when you start those dubbed toes, as some people call them, the bone is now millimeters from the edge of that hoof wall. and, yeah, like you are doing irreparable damage by chopping off that toe. So, absolutely, if there's something that you can recommend, I'm sure you're already doing it, but just try to get the word out there that, if you're at the point where you're having to dub that toe, you absolutely need to start trimming at least for a shorter period of time, very frequently and taking a tiny bit off. Right. And then you can slowly, slowly bring everything back up and get the goat standing more towards the toe. But I'm talking like weekly, like taking off millimeters. and allowing for that toe to sort of return because yeah, you can easily go to the point of no return and you'll never get that toe back.
Sarah:Right. Anyway. So I just want to throw that out there for producers because I see it so often on these YouTube videos and I'm just like, you know, I know these aren't vets and I mean, I have owners who are better at doing both. Hooves than me. Like, hands down. They have a ton of goats. They do it all the time. They're faster. They're stronger. But, I don't need to be better at them. I just need to be able to tell them when they're wrong. You know? Like, and, and be like, no, no, let's just, you know, let me just talk to you a little bit about this. So did you want to briefly go into that Laminitis paper? Because it was really, really interesting.
Gosia:You know what? Yes, I have a couple key points from that. so the laminitis paper that we keep referring to, it's a case study that we did. We had the advantage of doing a lot of stuff that probably the average owner of pets wouldn't necessarily be able to do, also a commercial farmer wouldn't be able to do. We had some research goats enter our research herd and we just noticed, you know, they were a little bit off. Not lame, that's the key thing that we want to stress. They didn't look lame. They just looked a bit kind of either the gait was a little bit just a little wonky, basically and one goat sort of did a little bit of goose stepping where she picked up her front legs a little bit more than the others. and so we started digging into their background. These goats came a commercial herd that fed a lot of grain. And so our vets, Determined at that point, she says, obviously, I don't know their history, but I'm going to say that this is subclinical laminitis and that, they've, Recovered enough. But there's some things going on. So we said, you know what, these are a really good case study that if we can get this information out there, vets can see actually what's physically going on with these goats. So we did get ethics approval for this and we decided that these were going to be a goes from a learning perspective. And so we did x rays of these goats. We did actually some thermal imaging to see if there was hot spots. And then the goats were were humanely euthanized. And we then actually took a band saw and cut into the hooves to get cross sections of the hoof. So we could really see the animal. Internally, what was happening with those bones in there. And, honestly, I can say, after seeing these cross sectioned hooves, go the most stoic animals that I've ever worked with. in a few of these hooves, basically, there wasn't a toe. Some of the bones had worn away and remodeled so much that There just wasn't a toe present and it really hammered home to me the importance Of looking at the animals more as a holistic. Yes, we're looking at their hooves, but holistically, you know, what are they experiencing? Yes, somewhere along the line. Somebody got them through a laminitis event. And there's been some kind of trimming and stuff that's corrective trimming, so to speak, that's happened to kind of get them acting like normal goats. But still had, some of them had these clubby hooves that we were kind of struggling to get through. They were super, super hard hoof growth. And yeah, it really, it started a very interesting conversation amongst, you know, myself and some of the technicians and our vet about, you know, we need to be thinking about these animals as individuals. And what are they experiencing? Like, were they actually in more pain than? You know, maybe we were thinking because they weren't outwardly lame, but then we started thinking, oh, you know, you kind of start thinking in the background. Oh, well, that one did spend a lot of time on her knees when she was grazing. And, you know, there's all this kind of stuff that comes back that yeah, that it was a, I highly recommend if your listeners can get A hold of the paper and just take a look at some of those photos. it'll sort of blow your mind a bit.
Sarah:the tip, the last bone at the end to me looked like cancer. Like it was like mottled eaten away like an osteosarcoma or something like that. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Gosia:Yeah. It's again you can actually see in some cases that bone was literally millimeters from the edge of, of the hoof wall. Right. And so we were sort of, we, we had so many interesting discussions around the coffee table about this, but you know, how much of that was just like literally, you know, there was no buffering there anymore and like the, it was remodeled and remodeled and remodeled. And there was just so much just odd growth, right? Like it didn't, it didn't look like a bone anymore, like you say, right?
Sarah:And the thing that I thought was interesting, and we will, tag this paper in the write up at the end of the podcast, but is that before you euthanize them. The hooves looked normal to me.
Gosia:of them. Normal ish. Yeah, there was a little bit of clubbing. But very normal for the most part.
Sarah:were trimmed nicely, you know, for the most part externally. Like, probably if a vet would have come out and saw that goat on its hooves, on its knees, not knowing the history, you would have been like, She has arthritis.
Gosia:That's right. Exactly.
Sarah:You wouldn't have, I mean, maybe it's just C E, C A E, whatever, but like, laminitis would not be where you would jump to, right?
Gosia:No, no, no, no. And And I think that's, yeah, that's a good take home. For vets that are listening is take a look at the hooves we've included quite a few pictures there that you can see that sort of some telltale signs. Like, I think I actually am now wondering and sort of second guessing is like, because I've had goats in the past with these clubby hooves that I get again, some ex commercial goats that come to me and they, you know, spend a couple of years of retirement before they're euthanized. And you see these clubby, clubby claws. and now it's like I'm thinking, Oh my God, like, are these all indicators of laminitis cases that just haven't been trained to look at more critically and say that that isn't a normal hoof, basically. We think it is, but it's not.
Sarah:Right, right, right. And without knowing their history. Or, you know, I think another takeaway is that as soon as you see issues, you need to address them. You know, when your goat starts limping, the second they are walking on their knees, like this isn't something you just wait and see if they get over. You know, let's try to address this and treat it as soon as you can. Absolutely. And I don't think
Gosia:yeah, it's an interesting thing. Cause especially for like yourself, if you're seeing a lot of pet goats, I think, you're, in a slightly better position because you've got people that have a little bit more invested in their animals I kind of see how a commercial farmer obviously isn't going to be like, well, let's X ray this goat and see what's going on. But maybe they can be like, Oh man, this is actually probably something where. for the goats welfare, it probably should be euthanized. This is an animal that probably should be culled. But for the pet owner, they shouldn't just say, yeah, it'll probably get better. Like they can, they're actually in a position where they can do some exploratory work. I don't know how many vets in your area have access to the thermography sort of cameras where you can just look for heat spots. Cause that's something else that we saw normal looking hooves, but the ones really big bone changes. had big heat spots in them. So, again, maybe just something. I know phones are getting to the point. we were using a big fancy camera, but I think phones are getting the ability to basically be able to see heat spots as well. So, maybe.
Sarah:That's really interesting. Yeah. Hmm. That sounds like a research study waiting to happen. Okay, I'm going to wind us up a little bit because we're getting long, as we predicted we would. Yeah, I got you. I'm gonna jump to our final question. This has been fabulous, by the way. I've very much enjoyed this conversation. I hope our listeners enjoyed as much as I have. So what do you see is the next problem that researchers, besides looking at heat in the feet need to think about and address in small ruminant medicine? And you can stick with your line of work, shoot for the stars, whatever you feel.
Gosia:I think it's broad is that increasingly we are need, like, there's just a need, even if maybe we're not thinking about it, but the consumer base is really, really, really pushing for knowing that the animals that they're getting the products from are leading a good life. And part of that lands on. They need to know the individual animals leading a good life, not just on a herd basis, right? And so much of our welfare audits and that sort of thing, they, they're, they're often, and obviously when you have thousands of animals, you tend to think of them as a unit, as a herd, as a mob, as a group, whatever. But I think increasingly we're going to need to start really focusing on the individual animal and monitoring individual animals. The good thing about that is we've kind of, we're in a really good age where, We've got technologies coming down the pipe that are increasingly available for small ruminants, like as an example of this is, over a decade ago, I stuck these accelerometers on goats during my PhD, and what we were able to see, but retrospectively, because it was very difficult to do this kind of work, these technologies weren't readily available, but we could see that I could predict that. Even 12 days out goats that were going to get pregnancy toxemia prior to kidding. So before we knew they had pregnancy toxemia, you could see it, but just based on their behavior changes 12 days out. So I feel like those types of applications where we can start using technology. I'm actually currently working with a local company here on a goat based monitor. I'm trying to make an accessible goat based monitor because I know they can still be expensive, but I feel like that. So if I had to in a very long winded way of saying We've got to start using technology and we have to start in the small ruminant space more efficiently and more effectively to be able to help us come up with ways of early predicting these, you know, clinical sort of killers like pregnant, like preg talks or you know, maybe we could start using it the animals that are going to become lame and things like that. I see that, sorry, very large answer to your question, but I think that's where I see things going. Okay.
Sarah:But I love that because it's very different than what anyone else has said, you know Like I think that and I think you're 100 right people absolutely want to know That the animals they're eating were Not tortured to be on their plate.
Gosia:I really hope it's not at that stage where it's tortured, but yes, I think and actually bringing this back to one of my roles where I'm at Companion Animals New Zealand, our big push in that organization is not just that they're not suffering, they've got a good life. Like that's our motto what can we do to make sure that they actually have a good life? And I feel like I don't want to just say the technologies are the solution to everything, but they're definitely the solution. in a large herd environment where it's impossible to look at the individual. and also I guess for pet owners, having these, you know, how you like, it's great. Like I'm currently, as I said, I'm currently trialing these monitors and it's phenomenal. Like my phone tells me, when my goat needs to get a little bit more exercise, it's awesome.
Sarah:would love that. And I think What I really want is the good life for a goat to be defined by the animal scientists that also consider ourselves food animal scientists and not people who want to say goats are little humans. You know what I mean? Right? So that good life, and you can't see me because I'm doing quotes, but it needs to be defined by those of us that. we want it all. We want the good life and we want the steaks, right? We want the milk.
Gosia:the milk. You
Sarah:know, we want the products. But we want it all. And that's possible. That's 100 percent possible. There's no reason that all of those boxes and all those needs can't be met.
Gosia:Absolutely.
Sarah:Okay, well, here we have another episode of Boz and Bleats. I just want to thank Dr. Gobel again. And let me just tell you the 18 hour time difference has been a little bit hard for us to schedule, but we've figured it out. So yes, we did. Thank you very much. And we will see you next month on Boz and Bleats.
Gosia:Awesome, thank you, sir.
Sarah:know, I won't let, it's not giving me an option to stop. What's happening?
Gosia:Oh, yeah, I'm not able to either. So, hmm.
Sarah:Well, I'm going to hit leave, so I might lose you, but I don't know why it's not stopping. So I'm going to try leave. Thank you so much. If you ever need anything from my side of the world, let me know. Yeah.
Gosia:Awesome.
Sarah:it was great.
