January 1, 2025 • 50 mins
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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sarah (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the next edition of Boz and Bleats.
Today we'll be talking to Dr.
Gosha Zobel, a scientist thatruns a research consultancy in
New Zealand.
She works with several animalproduction industries in New
Zealand and internationally.
She is also currently theWelfare Science Program
Coordinator at Companion Animalsin New Zealand, Which, if I
(00:24):
understand correctly, is a nonprofit in New Zealand that
supports animal welfare.
For those of you that may need aquick reminding, animal welfare
is not the same as animalrights.
Welfare science focuses onensuring animals in our care
receive the best possible careand live a good life regardless
of their role.
Everyone who works with animalsshould very much be for animal
(00:45):
welfare in all species that welove, raise, consume, treat when
they're sick, or gain productsfrom.
It's great to see you, Dr.
Zobel.
Thanks for chatting with ustoday.
Gosia (00:57):
I'm so happy and honored to have been asked to contribute
to the amazing work that youguys do.
So thank you.
Sarah (01:04):
Awesome.
So I always like to start with alittle bit of history.
Dr.
Sobel, please give us abackground where you went to
school, where you grew up, allof that.
We never, you're the first toget international guests on Boz
and Bleats.
But honestly, if you are in thesmall ruminant world and you're
looking at medications,research.
So much of it is doneinternationally both in Europe
(01:27):
and over in Australia and NewZealand, because you guys just
have so many more smallruminants than we do, at least
per area of space.
And so really we do need to lookabroad for research.
All of these countries are wayahead 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 (01:47):
Honestly, if I go all the way back, I'm originally from
Poland which is where the namestems from.
And then progressively made myway over to North America with
my family immigrated into NewYork, actually, and then popped
up to Peterborough, Canada inOntario.
That's where I actually gotintroduced to goats at a really
young age.
We first got them as a companionto horses.
(02:10):
But in my teens, I thought itwas a great entrepreneurial idea
to start breeding goat kids.
I was probably the only 16 yearold girl showing up to the sales
yards with goats.
Piled in the back of my HondaCivic I was sort of reflecting
on that the other day and allfunniness aside, I think that
was the moment where I thoughtone day I'll probably be working
(02:34):
in animal welfare when I waspulling up and dropping off
these goat kids at the saleyards, there would be little
Snickers and stuff.
from the workers there becauseI'd be bringing my own extra hay
and bedding for the goats I justknew that one day I would want
to work with, with animals, butalso people to improve the way
that animals were being treated.
Cared for.
Fast forward a couple decadesafter that I ended up with a PhD
(02:57):
from the University of BritishColumbia in Vancouver, Canada,
and I was really focused on goatand cow behavior specifically
around dry off and thetransition period and that sort
of thing.
And ultimately that led me toNew Zealand because at the time
this is 10 years ago now thegovernment had a huge push for
(03:19):
dairy goat research the programI was leading was 8 million over
five years, dedicated to goatwelfare, which was phenomenal.
But then unfortunately, thegovernment lost interest.
And after that funding ran out Ieventually just decided, you
know what, I'm going to be ableto make a difference if I focus
on sort of smaller clients,smaller pots of money.
(03:40):
And that's what I've been doingin the last year and a half.
I've been focusing on a businesswith my good friend that has an
animal ethics background, andwe've been having a great time
doing science.
All over the show lots ofbehavior studies and
specifically a lot of them havebeen focusing on goats.
So yeah.
Sarah (03:59):
Awesome.
I love that.
Two of my favorite researcherresearch in this world is
welfare studies that make theanimals happier and make the
farmers money and environmentalstudies that help the planet
stay healthy and save the farmermoney at the time.
If we can in the animal worldcombine all of that, like Those
(04:21):
are the best things in theworld.
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'retalking about today.
We're talking about goat hooveswhich is awesome.
(04:44):
So we're going to talk abouthoof trimming and some like
normal Kind of behaviors andgoats get a tribute to hoof
growth and hoof care.
And some stuff like that.
I really enjoyed, I read threedifferent papers of yours in
preparing for this and they wereall super interesting.
So I was seeing before, like Ilive in the pet world the pet
(05:06):
goat world, but we have a lot ofpeople who listen, ASRP members
who work in the goat dairyworld, and I, most of this will
apply to sheep, right?
Pretty not the behaviors ofstuff.
What'd you say?
Gosia (05:21):
Yeah, it's tricky because I feel like sheep there's been a
lot more breeding to make surethat their hooves aren't as
prone to overgrowing and gettingInfections and stuff but yes, I
mean from a trimming perspectiveprobably I don't know there has
been the same level of researchAnd talking about the hoof
angles changing and that sort ofthing I'm not aware of that
having been done in sheep, but Iguess the general principles
(05:44):
will probably apply
Sarah (05:46):
Okay.
So why don't we first kind ofjump into the paper about just
like Normal kind of activitiesof goats.
Yeah that I think is awesomebecause it's basically like This
is what goats love to do.
Let's try to give them theoption of what they love to do,
even if you have a thousandgoats, just like how we've moved
(06:06):
away from stall barns and cowsbecause cows need to groom and
do all that.
And now that we know more abouttheir behavior, they need to
lunch to stand up all that.
Like we need to bring that kindof research into the go world.
Absolutely.
Gosia (06:19):
Absolutely.
I was, it's funny because I've,I started as I was mentioning
when I first came over to NewZealand from Canada, I started
thinking in that, you know,immediately in the commercial
space, what can we do to improvethe environment?
But then I had this sort of,well, it was a very fortuitous
type of situation that came upfor me and I was incredibly
(06:41):
lucky to head over to the SwissAlps with a student.
And we went to the Ticinoregion, which is in the southern
Swiss Alps.
And we had the pleasure of beinghosted by a farmer there that
manages about a hundred goats,milking goats, in an alpine
environment.
And I kind of realized, you knowwhat, we should be learning from
these goats.
(07:02):
And bringing that to thecommercial space rather than
just starting in the commercialspace because we just saw so
much of the behavior that thesegoats were doing that it's like,
I wouldn't have even reallythought to necessarily try that
in the commercial space beforewe saw it.
So my student and I followedthese goats and there was about
100 goats and they kind of splitthemselves into herds at night.
(07:23):
And we split them up and Ifollowed some and my student
followed some other ones.
We had accelerometers on them.
We had GPS on them.
And we just wanted to see whatthey were doing.
It was the best study I'd everrun because I literally just got
to sit there all day and watchand write down what they were
doing.
I think there some key thingsthat I came away with from that
study.
First of all, these goatsanywhere between three and four
(07:45):
kilometers a day.
These goats were covering ontheir own.
No one was chasing them around.
In fact, The only fences that wesaw were the ones that
surrounded the hut to keep thegoats out of where the people
slept.
Otherwise, the goats were,completely free range.
They brought themselves down formilking once a day.
They would head up severalhundred meters in elevation and
(08:08):
would be traveling, as I said,three to four kilometers a day.
That in itself was a first takehome for me.
There had been some olderresearch 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 thatmost of the time during the day.
They were in caves and hardsurfaces, so they were spending
(08:31):
this time, first of all, hidingbecause it was quite warm, but
also on rocks, like they werealways on rocks, even if there
was fluffy grass around for themto lay on, they were on the
rocks instead.
And that also led to my thirdmajor observation, which was
their hooves.
When I asked the producer, Isaid, you know, like, when were
(08:52):
they trimmed?
And he went back into his memoryand he actually couldn't
remember.
So I think he just sort of madeup something because he didn't
want to make it seem like hehadn't trimmed them.
But he said, Oh, I don't know,five, maybe six months ago.
And these hooves, I wish I couldshare these with your listeners
because they looked like theperfect little hooves of like a
(09:13):
four week old kid, you know, thevery upright little heels and
the hoof wall was perfectlyattached to the sole.
And they were just these little,little tiny pockets of perfect
hoof.
And I had, I mean, I grew upwith goats and I'd never seen
hooves like this before.
It was just phenomenal.
And I think it's because it'sthe activity.
And, the surfaces that thesegoats were spending time on.
(09:36):
And so from that study, I wasable to kind of start
formulating some of the otherwork that we were then able to,
you know, think about and do incommercial systems.
But yeah, it was sort of a lifechanging thing for me as A goat
person, but also as a scientist.
Sarah (09:49):
And as we were discussing before we started, like some of
the takeaways that I love forthis as somebody who sees pet
goats and people are like, whatdo you think of this house?
What do you think of this tinylittle.
Shed that I'm keeping my goatsin and like me being able to say
like you don't just need deepbedding like Box and they can
get on and get in and get underand hide and you know Maybe your
(10:14):
goats an introvert and it needsa little time of its own like
Yeah, I love like the knowingthey love caves knowing they
love to hide, you know Knowingthat they love to sleep on
rocks, you know I think I thinkall of that's great and like
that would not be that hard evenif you have a thousand goats To
put some things in there.
I mean, we know they love tojump on stuff.
(10:35):
We know they love to play youknow and Not having to do
hooves.
You know, I, I encourage any ofmy goat producers, if you have
ramps that your goats arewalking up and down, you need to
put roofing shingles orsomething on them to wear their
hooves down.
Yeah, I love that.
Gosia (10:54):
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Go ahead.
We're trialing right now.
I have a small herd of 20 goatshere, but we're currently
trialing out electrical poles.
So, you know, the big concreteelectrical poles that, so we had
a bunch taken down in our frontpaddock and we cut them up and
made basically like climbingramps and they're just solid
(11:14):
concrete.
And it's amazing.
Like, if they could, they'd lieon the ramps like, you know, 45
degree angle.
They'd happily lie on thesethings.
I mean, I still have to trim,you know, very few people out
there are as lucky as thisfellow in Tichino, Switzerland,
where they're able to have thegoats basically trimming their
own feet.
But just adding those types ofsurfaces.
(11:35):
To the environment is so, soimportant, I think, to just let
the goats sort of help us a bitin terms of maintaining their
own hoots.
Sarah (11:45):
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, thesofter or the heel, I should say
the heels flat that are thesofter areas, you know, it just
keeps them more upright.
Like I just feel like all ofthat is really important.
(12:06):
So, yeah, I love that.
That paper was just, it wassuper interesting to read and
guess who wouldn't want to be inthe 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 (12:17):
It was a phenomenal time of the year.
Actually it was in July, so itwasn't cold.
But one, really interestingthing about that is that it was
quite warm during the day, butwe had temperature loggers all
around and those caves that thegoats were going into.
were a consistent, and Iapologize for using Celsius
here, but they were a consistent11 Celsius.
(12:38):
For the entire time during theheat of the day at night, it
didn't matter they were 11 or itvaried to maybe 11.
1 Celsius.
But it was crazy and you couldjust 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 wherethey get to spend their time,
they really will tell you.
I'm much more comfortable overhere, right, and that's why when
(13:00):
you were mentioning havingthese, you know, hidey holes or
something like that, like areasthat they can sort of hide out
in or self segregate from othergoats that are picking on them
or just areas that might be moreShaded in the summertime.
I think the more choice that youcan offer them.
They will happily take thatchoice
Sarah (13:20):
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 ifthey're all crutched together
and like, overheat because theyjust think darkness is darkness.
Gosia (13:38):
Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying and I've seen it
like I mean dairy cows here inNew Zealand are outdoors.
So we see it all the time withall the cows if there's a tree
they're under it.
It's interesting with goatsbecause We have a study.
It's only available as a studentthesis right now.
It never got published but Oneof the things we did we went to
a commercial farmer.
They Graciously, let us put someoutdoor space And we gave the
(14:00):
goats sand areas outside.
So they didn't have anything tograze on out there, but they
just had sand that they could goand spend time in.
And these bloody goats, like,they would go out there and
just, you know, picture highproduction sonnens, big udders,
just lounging in the sun.
So some of them would go, wealso had like little hidey areas
(14:21):
that they could choose, so somewould go into that darker space
and seek out the shade.
But man, one of the things wehad to have conversations with
this farmer about was perhaps wehad to limit the time they spent
time during the day outsidebecause they had sunburned
udders.
They were so keen to go outside,but I think it was also, a good
(14:42):
indicator.
As well as how motivated thegoats were to go outside.
So animals that are indoors,right?
This was the first time they'dhad an opportunity to go
outside.
Except for when they had beenkids.
Right, so they let their kids gooutside.
But then after that they getmoved indoors.
And they were willing to go outthere in like the heat of the
sun.
And they were willing to put upwith the sunburn.
Because they were just somotivated to be outside.
(15:04):
So yes, I do agree with you.
They do seek out shade.
But not all of them.
Sarah (15:11):
that's fair.
Gosia (15:12):
Fair.
I was just going to say the takehome there is the choice aspect,
right?
Give them the option of both.
Right.
Yes, for sure.
Yeah.
Sarah (15:22):
And I know that's not as easy in production as it is your
pet animal, but yeah, whateveryou can add is great.
You know, I absolutely adore thedairy farms that have some
outdoor space, even if they'reonly, you know, grazing during
their dry period, at least it'sa time in their life that
they're having some time to,
Gosia (15:41):
live normal
Sarah (15:41):
goat life.
Yeah.
Which paper did you want to moveto next?
The laminitis paper or the
Gosia (15:49):
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 wasquite keen on this topic.
And so we kind of systematicallythought through a story for her
PhD, where the first part of itreally looked at.
(16:09):
You know, obviously we have totrim but like why like why are
these who's growing and how muchright because nobody had really
quantified that.
And so we looked at 60 goatsthat were monitored for I know
it doesn't seem like a lot ofgoats but for the amount of.
Monitoring that had to be done.
That's about all that couldphysically be done, but on a
commercial farm 60 goats for twoyears and we kept the hooves
(16:34):
were trimmed and then we werescoring with a, it looked pretty
barbaric, but I swear it was, itwas totally fine.
We scored them with a saw and wekept putting scores on the
hooves so we could see how muchthey were growing.
And unreal, these, like in theend of this, it depended on how
old they were.
It also depended a little bitabout their point in lactation.
(16:57):
But on average, these hooveswere growing five millimeters a
month.
So in four months, you've gotit.
You've got a full inch ofgrowth, right?
And so if you're thinking aboutsome, you know, some farmers
during my really early workwhen, when we did a survey of,
of, of farms and over 100 farms,you know, we only had like just
(17:18):
over 20 percent of those farmstold us that they were trimming
every four months.
Everyone else was trimming twicea year or even once a year.
So that could be somewherebetween three and six
centimeters of growth betweentrims.
if you kind of put that intoperspective, you get goats with
these flippered hooves andthey're not being touched.
So that was kind of a simpletake home, but I think it was
(17:39):
really, really important for usto first establish that
baseline.
Incidentally, there's a sort ofa follow up that I did cause I
wanted to keep myself busyduring our lockdown here during
COVID.
And so I did a bit of a casestudy with three goat kids.
Cause that's what I had accessto at the time.
And I wanted to see if that hoofgrowth was any different.
In early life, and so wefollowed two Saanens and one
(18:02):
feral goat kid, and it wasshocking, we found on average it
was about 11 millimeters, sotwice the growth that we were
seeing in the older goats wewere seeing at that young age,
and that was so important, Ithink, to kind of shift, I've
been sharing that, and it'sreally shifted some people, in
(18:24):
terms of their thought aboutwhen they should start trimming,
because, if you've got up to acentimeters of growth, starting
at about four months of age,think about it, by the time
they're a year old, if theyhaven't had a chance to maintain
those hooves, if they haven'tbeen jumping around on rocks or
whatever, you could be gettingseveral.
(18:46):
I'm going to try to flip it,into Imperial, but several
inches of growth by the timethat goat is a year old.
And if you start trimming then,oh my goodness, you've already
probably done quite a bit ofdamage in terms of confirmation.
Because the goats are having tocompensate for these slippered,
long hooves, right?
Sarah (19:02):
Yeah, so that's kind of, yeah.
the fact that their babies andtheir growth plates aren't
completely developed and thoselittle joints are just
developing, I can't imagine howmuch more damage you're doing
than if you neglect them asadults, right?
Yes.
Gosia (19:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
And the, a great example of thiswork actually being taken on
board is NFAC in Canada.
The Canadian code of goat carebasically has since been updated
very recently.
I think last year it waspublished to say that goat kids
should be trimmed.
No later than six months of age.
(19:37):
And I feel like that's a hugestep in the right direction.
I mean, we trim here at fourmonths of age because, you know,
I just watch them.
And when I look at those hoovesand you see the hoof wall
starting to roll over underneathand covering up the sole,
basically, that's when youshould start trimming, because
if you don't.
That's when you startcompromising the hoof wall
(19:57):
integrity, and if you let thatroll over, then you're getting
stuff jammed underneath therethe hoof wall starts to then
separate, and then you've justcreated this ongoing process
that's So difficult to reverse.
I say that from experience, likeI've got some commercial goats X
commercial goats, and I've triedfor four years on one of them to
(20:17):
reverse that type of growth.
It's awful.
Sarah (20:21):
And I mean, we don't want to completely discount genetics
because some goats are going tohave messed up feet.
If you start trimming at fourmonths and you look at those
feet every single month, they'restill, you know, they're going
to get the sledge and the, allthis stuff.
So, I mean, Just cull thosegoats.
Don't breed them.
Yes.
Don't keep the genetics going.
(20:43):
Absolutely.
Gosia (20:43):
And you know what?
There's another study that Ihave that unfortunately we
haven't been able, It's in theworks.
It hasn't been published yet.
But we followed, on 16 farms, wefollowed more than 1, 200 goats.
For four years, and it wasunreal the farmer was arguably
caring for them better becausethey knew they were on this
(21:04):
study.
So they were trimming veryfrequently and all this.
Absolutely.
What we had is we had goatsthat.
We're receiving exactly the samecare, but some of them, by year
two, had these horrible splayedclaws the goats were standing on
their heels, claws were goingoutwards and I wish that we
could have actually looked attheir mums.
and been like, what is thegenetic component that's
(21:27):
contributing to this?
Because you could see it almost,we started taking photographs of
the hooves at nine months ofage, and you could start seeing
it even at that point.
Like, even at nine months beforethey'd even kitted, you saw
those.
So yeah, you're absolutely rightabout the genetics.
It's part of the reason why inthat little case study I
mentioned, we threw in thelittle feral goat because that
(21:48):
little feral.
First of all, is a totallunatic.
We still have her and, she,she's just, she's on everything.
jumps off everything.
She climbs higher than everyoneelse.
She's on anything.
And I think it's partially thatbehavior, but also partially
genetically.
When we were doing thatcomparison where we were
photographing the hooves everymonth of those kids, she was
(22:09):
probably half of the way alongin terms of growth as the other
two were.
As the Tucson kids.
And She actually went 16 monthsonce, without being trimmed.
And when I finally got to her, Iwas like, oh, thanks, I'll just
do a little rasp.
That was all I had to do.
So she was sort of selfmaintaining, but also probably
(22:30):
there's a genetic component.
So I think we've probably beendoing the age old and focusing
on the number one, which is milkproduction, especially in the
dairy realm, focusing on milkproduction, and maybe not
thinking about the hooves somuch and probably selecting for
these not great hooves that yousay probably should just be
culled.
Sarah (22:50):
Yeah, yeah.
And by selecting we mean notselecting at all and not even
thinking about it.
Just not even noticing,
Gosia (22:56):
absolutely.
Go ahead.
Sarah (22:59):
Here in New York, we mostly see in the pet world,
Nigerian dwarfs, but the besthooves I have are my breeders
who are breeding the Kikos, themore resistant, the great meat
breed.
They're a little psycho, butthey by far have the best feed,
the best parasite resistance.
(23:20):
You know, I'm loving those.
So the fact that in my practicearea, they're becoming more
popular.
I'm like, bring it on, bring allof them on.
They don't want to be my bestfriend when I get on the farm,
but I don't care.
Gosia (23:31):
It's awesome to hear.
So the Kikos are actually fromNew Zealand.
That's their origin and they area crossbred with feral goats.
So basically what I wasreferring to there, they're
crossbred and yeah, they areincredibly hardy.
Like I know of a few farmers inSaskatchewan in Canada where it
goes down to minus 50 andthey've got their Kikos are just
(23:54):
frolicking around outside.
You know, they can't get them inthe barn.
Sarah (23:58):
Oh, these are a little bit more bougie than that, but
yeah, I mean, The main one of myclients that has them, she just
has like calf hutches for them.
And they're perfectly with thatthrough our winter, you know,
and through New York, I mean, weget pretty cold here.
We have snow and they do great.
Gosia (24:17):
Well, I wonder how much of the, I mean, I'm not saying
that, that especially the dairybreeds be crossbreeding with,
with these Kikos, but I, I just,you know, do you see anything in
your area where people aresaying, right?
Sawn ins for dairy are great.
But, maybe I should beintroducing some Alpine, some
(24:37):
Toggenberg, some Oberhausli,that sort of thing, into the
Saanen line, to sort of helpwith the hooves.
Because the Saanens, at leasthere, the Saanens are the ones
that are notoriously poor hoofstructure.
Sarah (24:49):
So, I don't live in a world where people are really
thinking that, the people I havethat for.
I wish Dr.
Buckley was on with us.
'cause she's done a lot withlike the big dairy, You know,
Wisconsin, Iowa.
Right.
Those are the states that havethe big dairies.
Yeah.
And I guess it kind of dependsif the dairies also care about
(25:10):
showing and like having thesenice lines.
Yes.
So I, I haven't seen that, but Ican'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 (25:25):
something in there.
Yeah, that's right.
Exactly.
It's just,
Sarah (25:27):
it's just
Gosia (25:27):
hybrid.
Sarah (25:28):
Especially in the South where we're having such a
problem with resistance ofparasites.
You know, if we could bring insome of these other breeds to
these dairies that could helpwith hooves and parasites and
like other things.
I don't know.
It's just a thought.
Gosia (25:43):
I
Sarah (25:44):
think,
Gosia (25:44):
yeah, I, I mean, I, I'm all for hybrid vigor.
In New Zealand, the dairy cowshere, they walk for kilometers.
Twice a day to be milked rightbecause everything for the most
part of things outdoors herewith dairy cows and they have
this They call it a Kiwi crossand it's this lovely mix of
there's you know There'sHolstein Friesen in there, but
(26:06):
there's Jersey.
There's some Jersey.
There's Ayrshire's and Gosh,these things are just, like,
they're stocky little tanks thatare 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'thelp but, like, reflect on the
fact that You know, we're sortof in a unique place with goats
(26:30):
where we're not giant yet withthem in terms of the, you know,
there are some of these reallygiant farms, but it's not the
same, I guess, progression thatwe are with dairy cows.
And it's like, if we just getsome of the, Kind of some of the
big names sort of justdemonstrating that there could
be benefits to doing some moreof this kind of hybrid breeding
(26:53):
and selecting for good foods andactually parasites.
I think that's a great point.
I hadn't really been consideringthat, but selecting for that.
I just think we could, we couldsort of nip a lot of things in
the bud before they get evenworse.
Sarah (27:07):
Yeah, at least help in that direction,
Gosia (27:09):
know.
Sarah (27:11):
Move them that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So okay.
So in this study, all of thesegoats, you were able to put some
numbers to like typical growthwhich I think is good.
I love having those in my backpocket as a vet.
Like, you know, your goats aregonna, their hooves are going to
grow, you know, about an inch amonth?
Gosia (27:32):
Every two and a half months.
Sarah (27:36):
Okay.
Put that in our back pocket sowe can tell our owners that
they'll grow about an inch everyfour months.
And so, that's decent.
That's enough to mess up howthey're standing and how they're
walking and hurt their joints.
Gosia (27:54):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's actually what wefollowed on with.
So Laura my students, her secondstudy was actually focused on
what impact do we have when wetrim?
And so again, she did some funstuff where we actually had to
bring in horse vets because wedidn't have any of the goat
people that had actually evenhad x ray equipment.
(28:15):
So we brought some horse vets inon a regular basis and they
helped.
Again, look at these 60 goats ina standardized manner and
looking at their hooves beforeand after trimming and doing the
x rays, not just the photos ofwhat it looks like on the
outside, but what is it actuallydoing to those joints?
And I think one of the keythings, it was just unreal as
(28:36):
to, Before they got trimmed andthen a normal trimming, we had
almost a 10 degree change in theheel angles.
And anybody that can think, Imean, it might be hard to think
about it from a goatperspective, but if you've got
any, horse listeners, the lastthing you ever want is to have
animals walking on their heels,right?
Because they start stretchingall those ligaments in the, in
(28:59):
the, in the hind end of theanimal.
And if you think about, youknow, A goat, especially a dairy
goat that's carrying so muchweight back there and they're
standing on their heels.
It's like, oh, the confirmationissues that we see, we could
actually be preventing if wejust had a more standardized
trimming protocol and it evenimpacted the way I manage my own
(29:20):
goats right now.
I've got goats that depending ontheir needs, they're anywhere
between a four and an eight weektrimming cycle the farm that we
were working with where we weredoing this trimming study those
x rays, they were on a fourmonth cycle.
And so three times a year, andby the time we were done the
study, we basically told themyou need to increase that
(29:42):
frequency.
You just have to because thechanges that we're seeing in
these goats, it's so stressfulon them.
Because, you know, some of themwere coming up lame after not
because we were hittinganything.
There was no quick that we werehitting.
Blood.
It was literally, because wewere changing the angles on them
so much.
Right after trimming.
Sarah (30:01):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love, I don't know if you have4 H there, but I'm big into 4 H
here.
And I love telling my littlekids, like, I want you to lay
hands on these goats once amonth.
And more, I want them to feeltheir body condition score,
check their Fremontia, look attheir, you know, I just want,
when you have five goats,there's no reason you can't be
giving a hands on.
(30:23):
Once a month, you know, look attheir feet, whatever.
And I know that's notproduction.
I understand but you know Evenif you had a rotating schedule
just like in the dairy worldwhere you know That cow is going
to be put on that table Thismany weeks after kidney or after
calving or whatever and I mean Ifeel like if the if you milk 10
(30:46):
000 cows and can get it done Ifeel like if you milk 1000
goats, you can get it done and Iknow it's labor and All the
things, but,
Gosia (30:55):
I would say, yes, it's labor, but.
you could be preventing so manythings like it's actually a good
preventative labor in that onestudy that I talked about with
the over 1200 goats and 16farms.
We actually found that at ninemonths of age, goats that had
claws that were sort ofirregularly shaped, so
(31:17):
basically, you know, when wetook the photos head on, if a
claw was sticking out ratherthan coming straight down, those
goats were twice as likely tohave left the herd.
By their second lactation, andI'm not saying that's a
causation type of thing.
This is just an observationalstudy, but, you know, there was
still this aspect like what washappening, like, was there other
(31:38):
things that were contributingprobably as to why they were
leaving.
But the fact is, is that we didsee that these animals weren't
there.
So it's just, I just feel likethe more preventative care, I
think, to hooves that we couldstart doing with goats, the more
we could be increasing theirlongevity and we don't need the
massive turnover of goats thatsome farms are seeing.
(32:00):
and I think also From a smallholder perspective, if you've
got your five Nigerian dwarfs orwhatever, it's like you say,
it's that preventative care, youcould be preventing spending
hundreds of dollars having yourvet out all the time.
Not that I'm trying to get youout of a job, but right.
Sarah (32:15):
none of us are lacking work.
We don't need to be working onyour feet every five weeks.
Like I have plenty of work.
Gosia (32:25):
Exactly.
Sarah (32:27):
Yeah, but I mean, and the thing is like, and we know this
from the dairy industry, yourgoat isn't even making, hasn't
even started making you money inher first or second lactation.
She's still paying you back forall the money you put into her
as a kid, right?
And so if you're calling her atthree years old, That's a watch.
(32:47):
She has not made you any money,right?
Gosia (32:50):
Exactly.
So, yeah.
That preventative hoof careabsolutely.
That would, if somebody askedme, you know, what's the top
thing that we should berethinking in any goat herd, no
matter what size, I think it ishonestly hoof care.
Sarah (33:04):
Yeah,
Gosia (33:04):
earlier, more frequent.
Those are, that's the kind ofthe take home.
Great.
Sarah (33:09):
and I saw in your paper, you like the hoof boss.
This has been a big thing aroundhere.
People talking about moving tosomething more that's faster.
Right.
And you can get this in and I.
Very worried about people whodon't know what they're doing
using it.
You know, if you know how to doit, like, you can do a goat's
hoof, you can do a whole goat invery little time.
Gosia (33:32):
Oh yeah, like a minute of hoof.
if you've kind of got itmastered.
And actually an interestingthing at the very beginning of
this chat, you may havementioned trying to create sort
of a flat bottom hoof andbasically the heel.
And one of the things that wesaw with those goats, if I can
bring the conversation quicklyback to the Swiss goats, is they
actually didn't have flatbottoms.
(33:54):
They had quite curved hooves.
And You can create that a littlebit better with the hoof boss.
You can sort of sculpt the heelsa bit more.
But yes, you bring up a verygood point that if you're using,
and it doesn't have to be thehoof boss, I'm not trying to
advertise for anybody, but anysort of grinder.
you do need to be careful andyou're better off starting on
(34:17):
the cautious side or at leasthave somebody such as yourself
have a vet out to show you howto use those because yeah, you
can do some serious damage thatarguably is a lot harder to do
when you're reefing away onclippers, right?
Because before you do any majordamage, the usually complain,
Sarah (34:32):
Okay, I have a question, we're just to get down into the
weeds a little bit.
So I love watching the YouTubevideos that people have put out
for hoof care, just so I knowwhat my clients are watching.
Gosia (34:44):
Yeah.
And so
Sarah (34:45):
one of the big trends that I cannot stand is people
coming in and just straightlobbing the toe off.
And so, you know, it's have likethis box.
Right?
In my opinion, that's likepeople losing their big toe.
Like, that tip is their balance.
Am I correct?
Gosia (35:03):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
And it just, it, I think, Ithink it's actually perpetual.
I have some amazing photos ofexactly what you're talking
about.
And I think it perpetuates themalso because you've thrown their
balance.
It perpetuates them standingmore and more and more on their
heels.
So it actually then perpetuatesthem.
Wanting to cut the toe offfurther, further, further,
further, if I can, and yeah,it's, so we have some photos
(35:28):
online and one of the papersthat's actually about a
laminitis paper, so it's notdirectly about trimming, but you
can see how close the bonesactually are, like, this is a
cool thing to be able to seeinside the hoof, right, for an
owner.
those toe bones are so close tothe outside of that hoof that
(35:48):
the more you start trimming, youare literally millimeters when
you start those dubbed toes, assome people call them, the bone
is now millimeters from the edgeof that hoof wall.
and, yeah, like you are doingirreparable damage by chopping
off that toe.
So, absolutely, if there'ssomething that you can
recommend, I'm sure you'realready doing it, but just try
(36:11):
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 shorterperiod of time, very frequently
and taking a tiny bit off.
Right.
And then you can slowly, slowlybring everything back up and get
the goat standing more towardsthe toe.
But I'm talking like weekly,like taking off millimeters.
(36:35):
and allowing for that toe tosort of return because yeah, you
can easily go to the point of noreturn and you'll never get that
toe back.
Sarah (36:44):
Right.
Anyway.
So I just want to throw that outthere for producers because I
see it so often on these YouTubevideos and I'm just like, you
know, I know these aren't vetsand 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.
(37:04):
They're stronger.
But, I don't need to be betterat them.
I just need to be able to tellthem 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 bitabout this.
So did you want to briefly gointo that Laminitis paper?
Because it was really, reallyinteresting.
Gosia (37:21):
You know what?
Yes, I have a couple key pointsfrom that.
so the laminitis paper that wekeep referring to, it's a case
study that we did.
We had the advantage of doing alot of stuff that probably the
average owner of pets wouldn'tnecessarily be able to do, also
a commercial farmer wouldn't beable to do.
We had some research goats enterour research herd and we just
noticed, you know, they were alittle bit off.
(37:42):
Not lame, that's the key thingthat we want to stress.
They didn't look lame.
They just looked a bit kind ofeither the gait was a little bit
just a little wonky, basicallyand one goat sort of did a
little bit of goose steppingwhere she picked up her front
legs a little bit more than theothers.
and so we started digging intotheir background.
These goats came a commercialherd that fed a lot of grain.
(38:04):
And so our vets, Determined atthat point, she says, obviously,
I don't know their history, butI'm going to say that this is
subclinical laminitis and that,they've, Recovered enough.
But there's some things goingon.
So we said, you know what, theseare a really good case study
that if we can get thisinformation out there, vets can
(38:24):
see actually what's physicallygoing on with these goats.
So we did get ethics approvalfor this and we decided that
these were going to be a goesfrom a learning perspective.
And so we did x rays of thesegoats.
We did actually some thermalimaging to see if there was hot
spots.
And then the goats were werehumanely euthanized.
And we then actually took a bandsaw and cut into the hooves to
(38:47):
get cross sections of the hoof.
So we could really see theanimal.
Internally, what was happeningwith those bones in there.
And, honestly, I can say, afterseeing these cross sectioned
hooves, go the most stoicanimals that I've ever worked
with.
in a few of these hooves,basically, there wasn't a toe.
(39:08):
Some of the bones had worn awayand remodeled so much that There
just wasn't a toe present and itreally hammered home to me the
importance Of looking at theanimals more as a holistic.
Yes, we're looking at theirhooves, but holistically, you
know, what are theyexperiencing?
Yes, somewhere along the line.
(39:28):
Somebody got them through alaminitis event.
And there's been some kind oftrimming and stuff that's
corrective trimming, so tospeak, that's happened to kind
of get them acting like normalgoats.
But still had, some of them hadthese clubby hooves that we were
kind of struggling to getthrough.
They were super, super hard hoofgrowth.
And yeah, it really, it starteda very interesting conversation
(39:51):
amongst, you know, myself andsome of the technicians and our
vet about, you know, we need tobe thinking about these animals
as individuals.
And what are they experiencing?
Like, were they actually in morepain than?
You know, maybe we were thinkingbecause they weren't outwardly
lame, but then we startedthinking, oh, you know, you kind
of start thinking in thebackground.
Oh, well, that one did spend alot of time on her knees when
(40:14):
she was grazing.
And, you know, there's all thiskind of stuff that comes back
that yeah, that it was a, Ihighly recommend if your
listeners can get A hold of thepaper and just take a look at
some of those photos.
it'll sort of blow your mind abit.
Sarah (40:26):
the tip, the last bone at the end to me looked like
cancer.
Like it was like mottled eatenaway like an osteosarcoma or
something like that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Gosia (40:38):
Yeah.
It's again you can actually seein some cases that bone was
literally millimeters from theedge of, of the hoof wall.
Right.
And so we were sort of, we, wehad so many interesting
discussions around the coffeetable about this, but you know,
how much of that was just likeliterally, you know, there was
no buffering there anymore andlike the, it was remodeled and
(41:01):
remodeled and remodeled.
And there was just so much justodd growth, right?
Like it didn't, it didn't looklike a bone anymore, like you
say, right?
Sarah (41:09):
And the thing that I thought was interesting, and we
will, tag this paper in thewrite up at the end of the
podcast, but is that before youeuthanize them.
The hooves looked normal to me.
Gosia (41:21):
of them.
Normal ish.
Yeah, there was a little bit ofclubbing.
But very normal for the mostpart.
Sarah (41:26):
were trimmed nicely, you know, for the most part
externally.
Like, probably if a vet wouldhave come out and saw that goat
on its hooves, on its knees, notknowing the history, you would
have been like, She hasarthritis.
Gosia (41:39):
That's right.
Exactly.
Sarah (41:41):
You wouldn't have, I mean, maybe it's just C E, C A
E, whatever, but like, laminitiswould not be where you would
jump to, right?
Gosia (41:48):
No, no, no, no.
And And I think that's, yeah,that's a good take home.
For vets that are listening istake a look at the hooves we've
included quite a few picturesthere that you can see that sort
of some telltale signs.
Like, I think I actually am nowwondering and sort of second
guessing is like, because I'vehad goats in the past with these
clubby hooves that I get again,some ex commercial goats that
(42:12):
come to me and they, you know,spend a couple of years of
retirement before they'reeuthanized.
And you see these clubby, clubbyclaws.
and now it's like I'm thinking,Oh my God, like, are these all
indicators of laminitis casesthat just haven't been trained
to look at more critically andsay that that isn't a normal
hoof, basically.
We think it is, but it's not.
Sarah (42:33):
Right, right, right.
And without knowing theirhistory.
Or, you know, I think anothertakeaway is that as soon as you
see issues, you need to addressthem.
You know, when your goat startslimping, the second they are
walking on their knees, likethis isn't something you just
wait and see if they get over.
You know, let's try to addressthis and treat it as soon as you
(42:54):
can.
Absolutely.
And I don't think
Gosia (42:56):
yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Cause especially for likeyourself, if you're seeing a lot
of pet goats, I think, you're,in a slightly better position
because you've got people thathave a little bit more invested
in their animals I kind of seehow a commercial farmer
obviously isn't going to belike, well, let's X ray this
goat and see what's going on.
But maybe they can be like, Ohman, this is actually probably
(43:19):
something where.
for the goats welfare, itprobably should be euthanized.
This is an animal that probablyshould be culled.
But for the pet owner, theyshouldn't just say, yeah, it'll
probably get better.
Like they can, they're actuallyin a position where they can do
some exploratory work.
I don't know how many vets inyour area have access to the
thermography sort of cameraswhere you can just look for heat
(43:40):
spots.
Cause that's something else thatwe saw normal looking hooves,
but the ones really big bonechanges.
had big heat spots in them.
So, again, maybe just something.
I know phones are getting to thepoint.
we were using a big fancycamera, but I think phones are
getting the ability to basicallybe able to see heat spots as
(44:00):
well.
So, maybe.
Sarah (44:01):
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
Hmm.
That sounds like a researchstudy waiting to happen.
Okay, I'm going to wind us up alittle bit because we're getting
long, as we predicted we would.
Yeah, I got you.
I'm gonna jump to our finalquestion.
This has been fabulous, by theway.
I've very much enjoyed thisconversation.
I hope our listeners enjoyed asmuch as I have.
(44:23):
So what do you see is the nextproblem that researchers,
besides looking at heat in thefeet need to think about and
address in small ruminantmedicine?
And you can stick with your lineof work, shoot for the stars,
whatever you feel.
Gosia (44:37):
I think it's broad is that increasingly we are need,
like, there's just a need, evenif maybe we're not thinking
about it, but the consumer baseis really, really, really
pushing for knowing that theanimals that they're getting the
products from are leading a goodlife.
(44:58):
And part of that lands on.
They need to know the individualanimals leading a good life, not
just on a herd basis, right?
And so much of our welfareaudits and that sort of thing,
they, they're, they're often,and obviously when you have
thousands of animals, you tendto think of them as a unit, as a
herd, as a mob, as a group,whatever.
(45:19):
But I think increasingly we'regoing to need to start really
focusing on the individualanimal and monitoring individual
animals.
The good thing about that iswe've kind of, we're in a really
good age where, We've gottechnologies coming down the
pipe that are increasinglyavailable for small ruminants,
like as an example of this is,over a decade ago, I stuck these
(45:42):
accelerometers on goats duringmy PhD, and what we were able to
see, but retrospectively,because it was very difficult to
do this kind of work, thesetechnologies weren't readily
available, but we could see thatI could predict that.
Even 12 days out goats that weregoing to get pregnancy toxemia
prior to kidding.
So before we knew they hadpregnancy toxemia, you could see
(46:03):
it, but just based on theirbehavior changes 12 days out.
So I feel like those types ofapplications where we can start
using technology.
I'm actually currently workingwith a local company here on a
goat based monitor.
I'm trying to make an accessiblegoat based monitor because I
(46:23):
know they can still beexpensive, but I feel like that.
So if I had to in a very longwinded way of saying We've got
to start using technology and wehave to start in the small
ruminant space more efficientlyand more effectively to be able
to help us come up with ways ofearly predicting these, you
know, clinical sort of killerslike pregnant, like preg talks
(46:46):
or you know, maybe we couldstart using it the animals that
are going to become lame andthings like that.
I see that, sorry, very largeanswer to your question, but I
think that's where I see thingsgoing.
Okay.
Sarah (46:57):
But I love that because it's very different than what
anyone else has said, you knowLike I think that and I think
you're 100 right peopleabsolutely want to know That the
animals they're eating were Nottortured to be on their plate.
Gosia (47:12):
I really hope it's not at that stage where it's tortured,
but yes, I think and actuallybringing this back to one of my
roles where I'm at CompanionAnimals New Zealand, our big
push in that organization is notjust that they're not suffering,
they've got a good life.
Like that's our motto what canwe do to make sure that they
(47:33):
actually have a good life?
And I feel like I don't want tojust say the technologies are
the solution to everything, butthey're definitely the solution.
in a large herd environmentwhere 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.
(47:54):
Like my phone tells me, when mygoat needs to get a little bit
more exercise, it's awesome.
Sarah (48:01):
would love that.
And I think What I really wantis the good life for a goat to
be defined by the animalscientists that also consider
ourselves food animal scientistsand not people who want to say
goats are little humans.
You know what I mean?
Right?
So that good life, and you can'tsee me because I'm doing quotes,
(48:24):
but it needs to be defined bythose of us that.
we want it all.
We want the good life and wewant the steaks, right?
We want the milk.
Gosia (48:35):
the milk.
You
Sarah (48:37):
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 ofthose boxes and all those needs
can't be met.
Gosia (48:48):
Absolutely.
Sarah (48:48):
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 18hour time difference has been a
little bit hard for us toschedule, but we've figured it
out.
So yes, we did.
Thank you very much.
And we will see you next monthon Boz and Bleats.
Gosia (49:08):
Awesome, thank you, sir.
Sarah (49:10):
know, I won't let, it's not giving me an option to stop.
What's happening?
Gosia (49:15):
Oh, yeah, I'm not able to either.
So, hmm.
Sarah (49:20):
Well, I'm going to hit leave, so I might lose you, but
I don't know why it's notstopping.
So I'm going to try leave.
Thank you so much.
If you ever need anything frommy side of the world, let me
know.
Yeah.
Gosia (49:34):
Awesome.
Sarah (49:36):
it was great.
Hello and welcome to the next edition of Boz and Bleats.
Today we'll be talking to Dr.
Gosha Zobel, a scientist thatruns a research consultancy in
New Zealand.
She works with several animalproduction industries in New
Zealand and internationally.
She is also currently theWelfare Science Program
Coordinator at Companion Animalsin New Zealand, Which, if I
(00:24):
understand correctly, is a nonprofit in New Zealand that
supports animal welfare.
For those of you that may need aquick reminding, animal welfare
is not the same as animalrights.
Welfare science focuses onensuring animals in our care
receive the best possible careand live a good life regardless
of their role.
Everyone who works with animalsshould very much be for animal
(00:45):
welfare in all species that welove, raise, consume, treat when
they're sick, or gain productsfrom.
It's great to see you, Dr.
Zobel.
Thanks for chatting with ustoday.
Gosia (00:57):
I'm so happy and honored to have been asked to contribute
to the amazing work that youguys do.
So thank you.
Sarah (01:04):
Awesome.
So I always like to start with alittle bit of history.
Dr.
Sobel, please give us abackground where you went to
school, where you grew up, allof that.
We never, you're the first toget international guests on Boz
and Bleats.
But honestly, if you are in thesmall ruminant world and you're
looking at medications,research.
So much of it is doneinternationally both in Europe
(01:27):
and over in Australia and NewZealand, because you guys just
have so many more smallruminants than we do, at least
per area of space.
And so really we do need to lookabroad for research.
All of these countries are wayahead 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 (01:47):
Honestly, if I go all the way back, I'm originally from
Poland which is where the namestems from.
And then progressively made myway over to North America with
my family immigrated into NewYork, actually, and then popped
up to Peterborough, Canada inOntario.
That's where I actually gotintroduced to goats at a really
young age.
We first got them as a companionto horses.
(02:10):
But in my teens, I thought itwas a great entrepreneurial idea
to start breeding goat kids.
I was probably the only 16 yearold girl showing up to the sales
yards with goats.
Piled in the back of my HondaCivic I was sort of reflecting
on that the other day and allfunniness aside, I think that
was the moment where I thoughtone day I'll probably be working
(02:34):
in animal welfare when I waspulling up and dropping off
these goat kids at the saleyards, there would be little
Snickers and stuff.
from the workers there becauseI'd be bringing my own extra hay
and bedding for the goats I justknew that one day I would want
to work with, with animals, butalso people to improve the way
that animals were being treated.
Cared for.
Fast forward a couple decadesafter that I ended up with a PhD
(02:57):
from the University of BritishColumbia in Vancouver, Canada,
and I was really focused on goatand cow behavior specifically
around dry off and thetransition period and that sort
of thing.
And ultimately that led me toNew Zealand because at the time
this is 10 years ago now thegovernment had a huge push for
(03:19):
dairy goat research the programI was leading was 8 million over
five years, dedicated to goatwelfare, which was phenomenal.
But then unfortunately, thegovernment lost interest.
And after that funding ran out Ieventually just decided, you
know what, I'm going to be ableto make a difference if I focus
on sort of smaller clients,smaller pots of money.
(03:40):
And that's what I've been doingin the last year and a half.
I've been focusing on a businesswith my good friend that has an
animal ethics background, andwe've been having a great time
doing science.
All over the show lots ofbehavior studies and
specifically a lot of them havebeen focusing on goats.
So yeah.
Sarah (03:59):
Awesome.
I love that.
Two of my favorite researcherresearch in this world is
welfare studies that make theanimals happier and make the
farmers money and environmentalstudies that help the planet
stay healthy and save the farmermoney at the time.
If we can in the animal worldcombine all of that, like Those
(04:21):
are the best things in theworld.
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'retalking about today.
We're talking about goat hooveswhich is awesome.
(04:44):
So we're going to talk abouthoof trimming and some like
normal Kind of behaviors andgoats get a tribute to hoof
growth and hoof care.
And some stuff like that.
I really enjoyed, I read threedifferent papers of yours in
preparing for this and they wereall super interesting.
So I was seeing before, like Ilive in the pet world the pet
(05:06):
goat world, but we have a lot ofpeople who listen, ASRP members
who work in the goat dairyworld, and I, most of this will
apply to sheep, right?
Pretty not the behaviors ofstuff.
What'd you say?
Gosia (05:21):
Yeah, it's tricky because I feel like sheep there's been a
lot more breeding to make surethat their hooves aren't as
prone to overgrowing and gettingInfections and stuff but yes, I
mean from a trimming perspectiveprobably I don't know there has
been the same level of researchAnd talking about the hoof
angles changing and that sort ofthing I'm not aware of that
having been done in sheep, but Iguess the general principles
(05:44):
will probably apply
Sarah (05:46):
Okay.
So why don't we first kind ofjump into the paper about just
like Normal kind of activitiesof goats.
Yeah that I think is awesomebecause it's basically like This
is what goats love to do.
Let's try to give them theoption of what they love to do,
even if you have a thousandgoats, just like how we've moved
(06:06):
away from stall barns and cowsbecause cows need to groom and
do all that.
And now that we know more abouttheir behavior, they need to
lunch to stand up all that.
Like we need to bring that kindof research into the go world.
Absolutely.
Gosia (06:19):
Absolutely.
I was, it's funny because I've,I started as I was mentioning
when I first came over to NewZealand from Canada, I started
thinking in that, you know,immediately in the commercial
space, what can we do to improvethe environment?
But then I had this sort of,well, it was a very fortuitous
type of situation that came upfor me and I was incredibly
(06:41):
lucky to head over to the SwissAlps with a student.
And we went to the Ticinoregion, which is in the southern
Swiss Alps.
And we had the pleasure of beinghosted by a farmer there that
manages about a hundred goats,milking goats, in an alpine
environment.
And I kind of realized, you knowwhat, we should be learning from
these goats.
(07:02):
And bringing that to thecommercial space rather than
just starting in the commercialspace because we just saw so
much of the behavior that thesegoats were doing that it's like,
I wouldn't have even reallythought to necessarily try that
in the commercial space beforewe saw it.
So my student and I followedthese goats and there was about
100 goats and they kind of splitthemselves into herds at night.
(07:23):
And we split them up and Ifollowed some and my student
followed some other ones.
We had accelerometers on them.
We had GPS on them.
And we just wanted to see whatthey were doing.
It was the best study I'd everrun because I literally just got
to sit there all day and watchand write down what they were
doing.
I think there some key thingsthat I came away with from that
study.
First of all, these goatsanywhere between three and four
(07:45):
kilometers a day.
These goats were covering ontheir own.
No one was chasing them around.
In fact, The only fences that wesaw were the ones that
surrounded the hut to keep thegoats out of where the people
slept.
Otherwise, the goats were,completely free range.
They brought themselves down formilking once a day.
They would head up severalhundred meters in elevation and
(08:08):
would be traveling, as I said,three to four kilometers a day.
That in itself was a first takehome for me.
There had been some olderresearch 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 thatmost of the time during the day.
They were in caves and hardsurfaces, so they were spending
(08:31):
this time, first of all, hidingbecause it was quite warm, but
also on rocks, like they werealways on rocks, even if there
was fluffy grass around for themto lay on, they were on the
rocks instead.
And that also led to my thirdmajor observation, which was
their hooves.
When I asked the producer, Isaid, you know, like, when were
(08:52):
they trimmed?
And he went back into his memoryand he actually couldn't
remember.
So I think he just sort of madeup something because he didn't
want to make it seem like hehadn't trimmed them.
But he said, Oh, I don't know,five, maybe six months ago.
And these hooves, I wish I couldshare these with your listeners
because they looked like theperfect little hooves of like a
(09:13):
four week old kid, you know, thevery upright little heels and
the hoof wall was perfectlyattached to the sole.
And they were just these little,little tiny pockets of perfect
hoof.
And I had, I mean, I grew upwith goats and I'd never seen
hooves like this before.
It was just phenomenal.
And I think it's because it'sthe activity.
And, the surfaces that thesegoats were spending time on.
(09:36):
And so from that study, I wasable to kind of start
formulating some of the otherwork that we were then able to,
you know, think about and do incommercial systems.
But yeah, it was sort of a lifechanging thing for me as A goat
person, but also as a scientist.
Sarah (09:49):
And as we were discussing before we started, like some of
the takeaways that I love forthis as somebody who sees pet
goats and people are like, whatdo you think of this house?
What do you think of this tinylittle.
Shed that I'm keeping my goatsin and like me being able to say
like you don't just need deepbedding like Box and they can
get on and get in and get underand hide and you know Maybe your
(10:14):
goats an introvert and it needsa little time of its own like
Yeah, I love like the knowingthey love caves knowing they
love to hide, you know Knowingthat they love to sleep on
rocks, you know I think I thinkall of that's great and like
that would not be that hard evenif you have a thousand goats To
put some things in there.
I mean, we know they love tojump on stuff.
(10:35):
We know they love to play youknow and Not having to do
hooves.
You know, I, I encourage any ofmy goat producers, if you have
ramps that your goats arewalking up and down, you need to
put roofing shingles orsomething on them to wear their
hooves down.
Yeah, I love that.
Gosia (10:54):
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Go ahead.
We're trialing right now.
I have a small herd of 20 goatshere, but we're currently
trialing out electrical poles.
So, you know, the big concreteelectrical poles that, so we had
a bunch taken down in our frontpaddock and we cut them up and
made basically like climbingramps and they're just solid
(11:14):
concrete.
And it's amazing.
Like, if they could, they'd lieon the ramps like, you know, 45
degree angle.
They'd happily lie on thesethings.
I mean, I still have to trim,you know, very few people out
there are as lucky as thisfellow in Tichino, Switzerland,
where they're able to have thegoats basically trimming their
own feet.
But just adding those types ofsurfaces.
(11:35):
To the environment is so, soimportant, I think, to just let
the goats sort of help us a bitin terms of maintaining their
own hoots.
Sarah (11:45):
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, thesofter or the heel, I should say
the heels flat that are thesofter areas, you know, it just
keeps them more upright.
Like I just feel like all ofthat is really important.
(12:06):
So, yeah, I love that.
That paper was just, it wassuper interesting to read and
guess who wouldn't want to be inthe 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 (12:17):
It was a phenomenal time of the year.
Actually it was in July, so itwasn't cold.
But one, really interestingthing about that is that it was
quite warm during the day, butwe had temperature loggers all
around and those caves that thegoats were going into.
were a consistent, and Iapologize for using Celsius
here, but they were a consistent11 Celsius.
(12:38):
For the entire time during theheat of the day at night, it
didn't matter they were 11 or itvaried to maybe 11.
1 Celsius.
But it was crazy and you couldjust 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 wherethey get to spend their time,
they really will tell you.
I'm much more comfortable overhere, right, and that's why when
(13:00):
you were mentioning havingthese, you know, hidey holes or
something like that, like areasthat they can sort of hide out
in or self segregate from othergoats that are picking on them
or just areas that might be moreShaded in the summertime.
I think the more choice that youcan offer them.
They will happily take thatchoice
Sarah (13:20):
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 ifthey're all crutched together
and like, overheat because theyjust think darkness is darkness.
Gosia (13:38):
Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying and I've seen it
like I mean dairy cows here inNew Zealand are outdoors.
So we see it all the time withall the cows if there's a tree
they're under it.
It's interesting with goatsbecause We have a study.
It's only available as a studentthesis right now.
It never got published but Oneof the things we did we went to
a commercial farmer.
They Graciously, let us put someoutdoor space And we gave the
(14:00):
goats sand areas outside.
So they didn't have anything tograze on out there, but they
just had sand that they could goand spend time in.
And these bloody goats, like,they would go out there and
just, you know, picture highproduction sonnens, big udders,
just lounging in the sun.
So some of them would go, wealso had like little hidey areas
(14:21):
that they could choose, so somewould go into that darker space
and seek out the shade.
But man, one of the things wehad to have conversations with
this farmer about was perhaps wehad to limit the time they spent
time during the day outsidebecause they had sunburned
udders.
They were so keen to go outside,but I think it was also, a good
(14:42):
indicator.
As well as how motivated thegoats were to go outside.
So animals that are indoors,right?
This was the first time they'dhad an opportunity to go
outside.
Except for when they had beenkids.
Right, so they let their kids gooutside.
But then after that they getmoved indoors.
And they were willing to go outthere in like the heat of the
sun.
And they were willing to put upwith the sunburn.
Because they were just somotivated to be outside.
(15:04):
So yes, I do agree with you.
They do seek out shade.
But not all of them.
Sarah (15:11):
that's fair.
Gosia (15:12):
Fair.
I was just going to say the takehome there is the choice aspect,
right?
Give them the option of both.
Right.
Yes, for sure.
Yeah.
Sarah (15:22):
And I know that's not as easy in production as it is your
pet animal, but yeah, whateveryou can add is great.
You know, I absolutely adore thedairy farms that have some
outdoor space, even if they'reonly, you know, grazing during
their dry period, at least it'sa time in their life that
they're having some time to,
Gosia (15:41):
live normal
Sarah (15:41):
goat life.
Yeah.
Which paper did you want to moveto next?
The laminitis paper or the
Gosia (15:49):
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 wasquite keen on this topic.
And so we kind of systematicallythought through a story for her
PhD, where the first part of itreally looked at.
(16:09):
You know, obviously we have totrim but like why like why are
these who's growing and how muchright because nobody had really
quantified that.
And so we looked at 60 goatsthat were monitored for I know
it doesn't seem like a lot ofgoats but for the amount of.
Monitoring that had to be done.
That's about all that couldphysically be done, but on a
commercial farm 60 goats for twoyears and we kept the hooves
(16:34):
were trimmed and then we werescoring with a, it looked pretty
barbaric, but I swear it was, itwas totally fine.
We scored them with a saw and wekept putting scores on the
hooves so we could see how muchthey were growing.
And unreal, these, like in theend of this, it depended on how
old they were.
It also depended a little bitabout their point in lactation.
(16:57):
But on average, these hooveswere growing five millimeters a
month.
So in four months, you've gotit.
You've got a full inch ofgrowth, right?
And so if you're thinking aboutsome, you know, some farmers
during my really early workwhen, when we did a survey of,
of, of farms and over 100 farms,you know, we only had like just
(17:18):
over 20 percent of those farmstold us that they were trimming
every four months.
Everyone else was trimming twicea year or even once a year.
So that could be somewherebetween three and six
centimeters of growth betweentrims.
if you kind of put that intoperspective, you get goats with
these flippered hooves andthey're not being touched.
So that was kind of a simpletake home, but I think it was
(17:39):
really, really important for usto first establish that
baseline.
Incidentally, there's a sort ofa follow up that I did cause I
wanted to keep myself busyduring our lockdown here during
COVID.
And so I did a bit of a casestudy with three goat kids.
Cause that's what I had accessto at the time.
And I wanted to see if that hoofgrowth was any different.
In early life, and so wefollowed two Saanens and one
(18:02):
feral goat kid, and it wasshocking, we found on average it
was about 11 millimeters, sotwice the growth that we were
seeing in the older goats wewere seeing at that young age,
and that was so important, Ithink, to kind of shift, I've
been sharing that, and it'sreally shifted some people, in
(18:24):
terms of their thought aboutwhen they should start trimming,
because, if you've got up to acentimeters of growth, starting
at about four months of age,think about it, by the time
they're a year old, if theyhaven't had a chance to maintain
those hooves, if they haven'tbeen jumping around on rocks or
whatever, you could be gettingseveral.
(18:46):
I'm going to try to flip it,into Imperial, but several
inches of growth by the timethat goat is a year old.
And if you start trimming then,oh my goodness, you've already
probably done quite a bit ofdamage in terms of confirmation.
Because the goats are having tocompensate for these slippered,
long hooves, right?
Sarah (19:02):
Yeah, so that's kind of, yeah.
the fact that their babies andtheir growth plates aren't
completely developed and thoselittle joints are just
developing, I can't imagine howmuch more damage you're doing
than if you neglect them asadults, right?
Yes.
Gosia (19:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
And the, a great example of thiswork actually being taken on
board is NFAC in Canada.
The Canadian code of goat carebasically has since been updated
very recently.
I think last year it waspublished to say that goat kids
should be trimmed.
No later than six months of age.
(19:37):
And I feel like that's a hugestep in the right direction.
I mean, we trim here at fourmonths of age because, you know,
I just watch them.
And when I look at those hoovesand you see the hoof wall
starting to roll over underneathand covering up the sole,
basically, that's when youshould start trimming, because
if you don't.
That's when you startcompromising the hoof wall
(19:57):
integrity, and if you let thatroll over, then you're getting
stuff jammed underneath therethe hoof wall starts to then
separate, and then you've justcreated this ongoing process
that's So difficult to reverse.
I say that from experience, likeI've got some commercial goats X
commercial goats, and I've triedfor four years on one of them to
(20:17):
reverse that type of growth.
It's awful.
Sarah (20:21):
And I mean, we don't want to completely discount genetics
because some goats are going tohave messed up feet.
If you start trimming at fourmonths and you look at those
feet every single month, they'restill, you know, they're going
to get the sledge and the, allthis stuff.
So, I mean, Just cull thosegoats.
Don't breed them.
Yes.
Don't keep the genetics going.
(20:43):
Absolutely.
Gosia (20:43):
And you know what?
There's another study that Ihave that unfortunately we
haven't been able, It's in theworks.
It hasn't been published yet.
But we followed, on 16 farms, wefollowed more than 1, 200 goats.
For four years, and it wasunreal the farmer was arguably
caring for them better becausethey knew they were on this
(21:04):
study.
So they were trimming veryfrequently and all this.
Absolutely.
What we had is we had goatsthat.
We're receiving exactly the samecare, but some of them, by year
two, had these horrible splayedclaws the goats were standing on
their heels, claws were goingoutwards and I wish that we
could have actually looked attheir mums.
and been like, what is thegenetic component that's
(21:27):
contributing to this?
Because you could see it almost,we started taking photographs of
the hooves at nine months ofage, and you could start seeing
it even at that point.
Like, even at nine months beforethey'd even kitted, you saw
those.
So yeah, you're absolutely rightabout the genetics.
It's part of the reason why inthat little case study I
mentioned, we threw in thelittle feral goat because that
(21:48):
little feral.
First of all, is a totallunatic.
We still have her and, she,she's just, she's on everything.
jumps off everything.
She climbs higher than everyoneelse.
She's on anything.
And I think it's partially thatbehavior, but also partially
genetically.
When we were doing thatcomparison where we were
photographing the hooves everymonth of those kids, she was
(22:09):
probably half of the way alongin terms of growth as the other
two were.
As the Tucson kids.
And She actually went 16 monthsonce, without being trimmed.
And when I finally got to her, Iwas like, oh, thanks, I'll just
do a little rasp.
That was all I had to do.
So she was sort of selfmaintaining, but also probably
(22:30):
there's a genetic component.
So I think we've probably beendoing the age old and focusing
on the number one, which is milkproduction, especially in the
dairy realm, focusing on milkproduction, and maybe not
thinking about the hooves somuch and probably selecting for
these not great hooves that yousay probably should just be
culled.
Sarah (22:50):
Yeah, yeah.
And by selecting we mean notselecting at all and not even
thinking about it.
Just not even noticing,
Gosia (22:56):
absolutely.
Go ahead.
Sarah (22:59):
Here in New York, we mostly see in the pet world,
Nigerian dwarfs, but the besthooves I have are my breeders
who are breeding the Kikos, themore resistant, the great meat
breed.
They're a little psycho, butthey by far have the best feed,
the best parasite resistance.
(23:20):
You know, I'm loving those.
So the fact that in my practicearea, they're becoming more
popular.
I'm like, bring it on, bring allof them on.
They don't want to be my bestfriend when I get on the farm,
but I don't care.
Gosia (23:31):
It's awesome to hear.
So the Kikos are actually fromNew Zealand.
That's their origin and they area crossbred with feral goats.
So basically what I wasreferring to there, they're
crossbred and yeah, they areincredibly hardy.
Like I know of a few farmers inSaskatchewan in Canada where it
goes down to minus 50 andthey've got their Kikos are just
(23:54):
frolicking around outside.
You know, they can't get them inthe barn.
Sarah (23:58):
Oh, these are a little bit more bougie than that, but
yeah, I mean, The main one of myclients that has them, she just
has like calf hutches for them.
And they're perfectly with thatthrough our winter, you know,
and through New York, I mean, weget pretty cold here.
We have snow and they do great.
Gosia (24:17):
Well, I wonder how much of the, I mean, I'm not saying
that, that especially the dairybreeds be crossbreeding with,
with these Kikos, but I, I just,you know, do you see anything in
your area where people aresaying, right?
Sawn ins for dairy are great.
But, maybe I should beintroducing some Alpine, some
(24:37):
Toggenberg, some Oberhausli,that sort of thing, into the
Saanen line, to sort of helpwith the hooves.
Because the Saanens, at leasthere, the Saanens are the ones
that are notoriously poor hoofstructure.
Sarah (24:49):
So, I don't live in a world where people are really
thinking that, the people I havethat for.
I wish Dr.
Buckley was on with us.
'cause she's done a lot withlike the big dairy, You know,
Wisconsin, Iowa.
Right.
Those are the states that havethe big dairies.
Yeah.
And I guess it kind of dependsif the dairies also care about
(25:10):
showing and like having thesenice lines.
Yes.
So I, I haven't seen that, but Ican'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 (25:25):
something in there.
Yeah, that's right.
Exactly.
It's just,
Sarah (25:27):
it's just
Gosia (25:27):
hybrid.
Sarah (25:28):
Especially in the South where we're having such a
problem with resistance ofparasites.
You know, if we could bring insome of these other breeds to
these dairies that could helpwith hooves and parasites and
like other things.
I don't know.
It's just a thought.
Gosia (25:43):
I
Sarah (25:44):
think,
Gosia (25:44):
yeah, I, I mean, I, I'm all for hybrid vigor.
In New Zealand, the dairy cowshere, they walk for kilometers.
Twice a day to be milked rightbecause everything for the most
part of things outdoors herewith dairy cows and they have
this They call it a Kiwi crossand it's this lovely mix of
there's you know There'sHolstein Friesen in there, but
(26:06):
there's Jersey.
There's some Jersey.
There's Ayrshire's and Gosh,these things are just, like,
they're stocky little tanks thatare 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'thelp but, like, reflect on the
fact that You know, we're sortof in a unique place with goats
(26:30):
where we're not giant yet withthem in terms of the, you know,
there are some of these reallygiant farms, but it's not the
same, I guess, progression thatwe are with dairy cows.
And it's like, if we just getsome of the, Kind of some of the
big names sort of justdemonstrating that there could
be benefits to doing some moreof this kind of hybrid breeding
(26:53):
and selecting for good foods andactually parasites.
I think that's a great point.
I hadn't really been consideringthat, but selecting for that.
I just think we could, we couldsort of nip a lot of things in
the bud before they get evenworse.
Sarah (27:07):
Yeah, at least help in that direction,
Gosia (27:09):
know.
Sarah (27:11):
Move them that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So okay.
So in this study, all of thesegoats, you were able to put some
numbers to like typical growthwhich I think is good.
I love having those in my backpocket as a vet.
Like, you know, your goats aregonna, their hooves are going to
grow, you know, about an inch amonth?
Gosia (27:32):
Every two and a half months.
Sarah (27:36):
Okay.
Put that in our back pocket sowe can tell our owners that
they'll grow about an inch everyfour months.
And so, that's decent.
That's enough to mess up howthey're standing and how they're
walking and hurt their joints.
Gosia (27:54):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's actually what wefollowed on with.
So Laura my students, her secondstudy was actually focused on
what impact do we have when wetrim?
And so again, she did some funstuff where we actually had to
bring in horse vets because wedidn't have any of the goat
people that had actually evenhad x ray equipment.
(28:15):
So we brought some horse vets inon a regular basis and they
helped.
Again, look at these 60 goats ina standardized manner and
looking at their hooves beforeand after trimming and doing the
x rays, not just the photos ofwhat it looks like on the
outside, but what is it actuallydoing to those joints?
And I think one of the keythings, it was just unreal as
(28:36):
to, Before they got trimmed andthen a normal trimming, we had
almost a 10 degree change in theheel angles.
And anybody that can think, Imean, it might be hard to think
about it from a goatperspective, but if you've got
any, horse listeners, the lastthing you ever want is to have
animals walking on their heels,right?
Because they start stretchingall those ligaments in the, in
(28:59):
the, in the hind end of theanimal.
And if you think about, youknow, A goat, especially a dairy
goat that's carrying so muchweight back there and they're
standing on their heels.
It's like, oh, the confirmationissues that we see, we could
actually be preventing if wejust had a more standardized
trimming protocol and it evenimpacted the way I manage my own
(29:20):
goats right now.
I've got goats that depending ontheir needs, they're anywhere
between a four and an eight weektrimming cycle the farm that we
were working with where we weredoing this trimming study those
x rays, they were on a fourmonth cycle.
And so three times a year, andby the time we were done the
study, we basically told themyou need to increase that
(29:42):
frequency.
You just have to because thechanges that we're seeing in
these goats, it's so stressfulon them.
Because, you know, some of themwere coming up lame after not
because we were hittinganything.
There was no quick that we werehitting.
Blood.
It was literally, because wewere changing the angles on them
so much.
Right after trimming.
Sarah (30:01):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love, I don't know if you have4 H there, but I'm big into 4 H
here.
And I love telling my littlekids, like, I want you to lay
hands on these goats once amonth.
And more, I want them to feeltheir body condition score,
check their Fremontia, look attheir, you know, I just want,
when you have five goats,there's no reason you can't be
giving a hands on.
(30:23):
Once a month, you know, look attheir feet, whatever.
And I know that's notproduction.
I understand but you know Evenif you had a rotating schedule
just like in the dairy worldwhere you know That cow is going
to be put on that table Thismany weeks after kidney or after
calving or whatever and I mean Ifeel like if the if you milk 10
(30:46):
000 cows and can get it done Ifeel like if you milk 1000
goats, you can get it done and Iknow it's labor and All the
things, but,
Gosia (30:55):
I would say, yes, it's labor, but.
you could be preventing so manythings like it's actually a good
preventative labor in that onestudy that I talked about with
the over 1200 goats and 16farms.
We actually found that at ninemonths of age, goats that had
claws that were sort ofirregularly shaped, so
(31:17):
basically, you know, when wetook the photos head on, if a
claw was sticking out ratherthan coming straight down, those
goats were twice as likely tohave left the herd.
By their second lactation, andI'm not saying that's a
causation type of thing.
This is just an observationalstudy, but, you know, there was
still this aspect like what washappening, like, was there other
(31:38):
things that were contributingprobably as to why they were
leaving.
But the fact is, is that we didsee that these animals weren't
there.
So it's just, I just feel likethe more preventative care, I
think, to hooves that we couldstart doing with goats, the more
we could be increasing theirlongevity and we don't need the
massive turnover of goats thatsome farms are seeing.
(32:00):
and I think also From a smallholder perspective, if you've
got your five Nigerian dwarfs orwhatever, it's like you say,
it's that preventative care, youcould be preventing spending
hundreds of dollars having yourvet out all the time.
Not that I'm trying to get youout of a job, but right.
Sarah (32:15):
none of us are lacking work.
We don't need to be working onyour feet every five weeks.
Like I have plenty of work.
Gosia (32:25):
Exactly.
Sarah (32:27):
Yeah, but I mean, and the thing is like, and we know this
from the dairy industry, yourgoat isn't even making, hasn't
even started making you money inher first or second lactation.
She's still paying you back forall the money you put into her
as a kid, right?
And so if you're calling her atthree years old, That's a watch.
(32:47):
She has not made you any money,right?
Gosia (32:50):
Exactly.
So, yeah.
That preventative hoof careabsolutely.
That would, if somebody askedme, you know, what's the top
thing that we should berethinking in any goat herd, no
matter what size, I think it ishonestly hoof care.
Sarah (33:04):
Yeah,
Gosia (33:04):
earlier, more frequent.
Those are, that's the kind ofthe take home.
Great.
Sarah (33:09):
and I saw in your paper, you like the hoof boss.
This has been a big thing aroundhere.
People talking about moving tosomething more that's faster.
Right.
And you can get this in and I.
Very worried about people whodon't know what they're doing
using it.
You know, if you know how to doit, like, you can do a goat's
hoof, you can do a whole goat invery little time.
Gosia (33:32):
Oh yeah, like a minute of hoof.
if you've kind of got itmastered.
And actually an interestingthing at the very beginning of
this chat, you may havementioned trying to create sort
of a flat bottom hoof andbasically the heel.
And one of the things that wesaw with those goats, if I can
bring the conversation quicklyback to the Swiss goats, is they
actually didn't have flatbottoms.
(33:54):
They had quite curved hooves.
And You can create that a littlebit better with the hoof boss.
You can sort of sculpt the heelsa bit more.
But yes, you bring up a verygood point that if you're using,
and it doesn't have to be thehoof boss, I'm not trying to
advertise for anybody, but anysort of grinder.
you do need to be careful andyou're better off starting on
(34:17):
the cautious side or at leasthave somebody such as yourself
have a vet out to show you howto use those because yeah, you
can do some serious damage thatarguably is a lot harder to do
when you're reefing away onclippers, right?
Because before you do any majordamage, the usually complain,
Sarah (34:32):
Okay, I have a question, we're just to get down into the
weeds a little bit.
So I love watching the YouTubevideos that people have put out
for hoof care, just so I knowwhat my clients are watching.
Gosia (34:44):
Yeah.
And so
Sarah (34:45):
one of the big trends that I cannot stand is people
coming in and just straightlobbing the toe off.
And so, you know, it's have likethis box.
Right?
In my opinion, that's likepeople losing their big toe.
Like, that tip is their balance.
Am I correct?
Gosia (35:03):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
And it just, it, I think, Ithink it's actually perpetual.
I have some amazing photos ofexactly what you're talking
about.
And I think it perpetuates themalso because you've thrown their
balance.
It perpetuates them standingmore and more and more on their
heels.
So it actually then perpetuatesthem.
Wanting to cut the toe offfurther, further, further,
further, if I can, and yeah,it's, so we have some photos
(35:28):
online and one of the papersthat's actually about a
laminitis paper, so it's notdirectly about trimming, but you
can see how close the bonesactually are, like, this is a
cool thing to be able to seeinside the hoof, right, for an
owner.
those toe bones are so close tothe outside of that hoof that
(35:48):
the more you start trimming, youare literally millimeters when
you start those dubbed toes, assome people call them, the bone
is now millimeters from the edgeof that hoof wall.
and, yeah, like you are doingirreparable damage by chopping
off that toe.
So, absolutely, if there'ssomething that you can
recommend, I'm sure you'realready doing it, but just try
(36:11):
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 shorterperiod of time, very frequently
and taking a tiny bit off.
Right.
And then you can slowly, slowlybring everything back up and get
the goat standing more towardsthe toe.
But I'm talking like weekly,like taking off millimeters.
(36:35):
and allowing for that toe tosort of return because yeah, you
can easily go to the point of noreturn and you'll never get that
toe back.
Sarah (36:44):
Right.
Anyway.
So I just want to throw that outthere for producers because I
see it so often on these YouTubevideos and I'm just like, you
know, I know these aren't vetsand 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.
(37:04):
They're stronger.
But, I don't need to be betterat them.
I just need to be able to tellthem 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 bitabout this.
So did you want to briefly gointo that Laminitis paper?
Because it was really, reallyinteresting.
Gosia (37:21):
You know what?
Yes, I have a couple key pointsfrom that.
so the laminitis paper that wekeep referring to, it's a case
study that we did.
We had the advantage of doing alot of stuff that probably the
average owner of pets wouldn'tnecessarily be able to do, also
a commercial farmer wouldn't beable to do.
We had some research goats enterour research herd and we just
noticed, you know, they were alittle bit off.
(37:42):
Not lame, that's the key thingthat we want to stress.
They didn't look lame.
They just looked a bit kind ofeither the gait was a little bit
just a little wonky, basicallyand one goat sort of did a
little bit of goose steppingwhere she picked up her front
legs a little bit more than theothers.
and so we started digging intotheir background.
These goats came a commercialherd that fed a lot of grain.
(38:04):
And so our vets, Determined atthat point, she says, obviously,
I don't know their history, butI'm going to say that this is
subclinical laminitis and that,they've, Recovered enough.
But there's some things goingon.
So we said, you know what, theseare a really good case study
that if we can get thisinformation out there, vets can
(38:24):
see actually what's physicallygoing on with these goats.
So we did get ethics approvalfor this and we decided that
these were going to be a goesfrom a learning perspective.
And so we did x rays of thesegoats.
We did actually some thermalimaging to see if there was hot
spots.
And then the goats were werehumanely euthanized.
And we then actually took a bandsaw and cut into the hooves to
(38:47):
get cross sections of the hoof.
So we could really see theanimal.
Internally, what was happeningwith those bones in there.
And, honestly, I can say, afterseeing these cross sectioned
hooves, go the most stoicanimals that I've ever worked
with.
in a few of these hooves,basically, there wasn't a toe.
(39:08):
Some of the bones had worn awayand remodeled so much that There
just wasn't a toe present and itreally hammered home to me the
importance Of looking at theanimals more as a holistic.
Yes, we're looking at theirhooves, but holistically, you
know, what are theyexperiencing?
Yes, somewhere along the line.
(39:28):
Somebody got them through alaminitis event.
And there's been some kind oftrimming and stuff that's
corrective trimming, so tospeak, that's happened to kind
of get them acting like normalgoats.
But still had, some of them hadthese clubby hooves that we were
kind of struggling to getthrough.
They were super, super hard hoofgrowth.
And yeah, it really, it starteda very interesting conversation
(39:51):
amongst, you know, myself andsome of the technicians and our
vet about, you know, we need tobe thinking about these animals
as individuals.
And what are they experiencing?
Like, were they actually in morepain than?
You know, maybe we were thinkingbecause they weren't outwardly
lame, but then we startedthinking, oh, you know, you kind
of start thinking in thebackground.
Oh, well, that one did spend alot of time on her knees when
(40:14):
she was grazing.
And, you know, there's all thiskind of stuff that comes back
that yeah, that it was a, Ihighly recommend if your
listeners can get A hold of thepaper and just take a look at
some of those photos.
it'll sort of blow your mind abit.
Sarah (40:26):
the tip, the last bone at the end to me looked like
cancer.
Like it was like mottled eatenaway like an osteosarcoma or
something like that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Gosia (40:38):
Yeah.
It's again you can actually seein some cases that bone was
literally millimeters from theedge of, of the hoof wall.
Right.
And so we were sort of, we, wehad so many interesting
discussions around the coffeetable about this, but you know,
how much of that was just likeliterally, you know, there was
no buffering there anymore andlike the, it was remodeled and
(41:01):
remodeled and remodeled.
And there was just so much justodd growth, right?
Like it didn't, it didn't looklike a bone anymore, like you
say, right?
Sarah (41:09):
And the thing that I thought was interesting, and we
will, tag this paper in thewrite up at the end of the
podcast, but is that before youeuthanize them.
The hooves looked normal to me.
Gosia (41:21):
of them.
Normal ish.
Yeah, there was a little bit ofclubbing.
But very normal for the mostpart.
Sarah (41:26):
were trimmed nicely, you know, for the most part
externally.
Like, probably if a vet wouldhave come out and saw that goat
on its hooves, on its knees, notknowing the history, you would
have been like, She hasarthritis.
Gosia (41:39):
That's right.
Exactly.
Sarah (41:41):
You wouldn't have, I mean, maybe it's just C E, C A
E, whatever, but like, laminitiswould not be where you would
jump to, right?
Gosia (41:48):
No, no, no, no.
And And I think that's, yeah,that's a good take home.
For vets that are listening istake a look at the hooves we've
included quite a few picturesthere that you can see that sort
of some telltale signs.
Like, I think I actually am nowwondering and sort of second
guessing is like, because I'vehad goats in the past with these
clubby hooves that I get again,some ex commercial goats that
(42:12):
come to me and they, you know,spend a couple of years of
retirement before they'reeuthanized.
And you see these clubby, clubbyclaws.
and now it's like I'm thinking,Oh my God, like, are these all
indicators of laminitis casesthat just haven't been trained
to look at more critically andsay that that isn't a normal
hoof, basically.
We think it is, but it's not.
Sarah (42:33):
Right, right, right.
And without knowing theirhistory.
Or, you know, I think anothertakeaway is that as soon as you
see issues, you need to addressthem.
You know, when your goat startslimping, the second they are
walking on their knees, likethis isn't something you just
wait and see if they get over.
You know, let's try to addressthis and treat it as soon as you
(42:54):
can.
Absolutely.
And I don't think
Gosia (42:56):
yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Cause especially for likeyourself, if you're seeing a lot
of pet goats, I think, you're,in a slightly better position
because you've got people thathave a little bit more invested
in their animals I kind of seehow a commercial farmer
obviously isn't going to belike, well, let's X ray this
goat and see what's going on.
But maybe they can be like, Ohman, this is actually probably
(43:19):
something where.
for the goats welfare, itprobably should be euthanized.
This is an animal that probablyshould be culled.
But for the pet owner, theyshouldn't just say, yeah, it'll
probably get better.
Like they can, they're actuallyin a position where they can do
some exploratory work.
I don't know how many vets inyour area have access to the
thermography sort of cameraswhere you can just look for heat
(43:40):
spots.
Cause that's something else thatwe saw normal looking hooves,
but the ones really big bonechanges.
had big heat spots in them.
So, again, maybe just something.
I know phones are getting to thepoint.
we were using a big fancycamera, but I think phones are
getting the ability to basicallybe able to see heat spots as
(44:00):
well.
So, maybe.
Sarah (44:01):
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
Hmm.
That sounds like a researchstudy waiting to happen.
Okay, I'm going to wind us up alittle bit because we're getting
long, as we predicted we would.
Yeah, I got you.
I'm gonna jump to our finalquestion.
This has been fabulous, by theway.
I've very much enjoyed thisconversation.
I hope our listeners enjoyed asmuch as I have.
(44:23):
So what do you see is the nextproblem that researchers,
besides looking at heat in thefeet need to think about and
address in small ruminantmedicine?
And you can stick with your lineof work, shoot for the stars,
whatever you feel.
Gosia (44:37):
I think it's broad is that increasingly we are need,
like, there's just a need, evenif maybe we're not thinking
about it, but the consumer baseis really, really, really
pushing for knowing that theanimals that they're getting the
products from are leading a goodlife.
(44:58):
And part of that lands on.
They need to know the individualanimals leading a good life, not
just on a herd basis, right?
And so much of our welfareaudits and that sort of thing,
they, they're, they're often,and obviously when you have
thousands of animals, you tendto think of them as a unit, as a
herd, as a mob, as a group,whatever.
(45:19):
But I think increasingly we'regoing to need to start really
focusing on the individualanimal and monitoring individual
animals.
The good thing about that iswe've kind of, we're in a really
good age where, We've gottechnologies coming down the
pipe that are increasinglyavailable for small ruminants,
like as an example of this is,over a decade ago, I stuck these
(45:42):
accelerometers on goats duringmy PhD, and what we were able to
see, but retrospectively,because it was very difficult to
do this kind of work, thesetechnologies weren't readily
available, but we could see thatI could predict that.
Even 12 days out goats that weregoing to get pregnancy toxemia
prior to kidding.
So before we knew they hadpregnancy toxemia, you could see
(46:03):
it, but just based on theirbehavior changes 12 days out.
So I feel like those types ofapplications where we can start
using technology.
I'm actually currently workingwith a local company here on a
goat based monitor.
I'm trying to make an accessiblegoat based monitor because I
(46:23):
know they can still beexpensive, but I feel like that.
So if I had to in a very longwinded way of saying We've got
to start using technology and wehave to start in the small
ruminant space more efficientlyand more effectively to be able
to help us come up with ways ofearly predicting these, you
know, clinical sort of killerslike pregnant, like preg talks
(46:46):
or you know, maybe we couldstart using it the animals that
are going to become lame andthings like that.
I see that, sorry, very largeanswer to your question, but I
think that's where I see thingsgoing.
Okay.
Sarah (46:57):
But I love that because it's very different than what
anyone else has said, you knowLike I think that and I think
you're 100 right peopleabsolutely want to know That the
animals they're eating were Nottortured to be on their plate.
Gosia (47:12):
I really hope it's not at that stage where it's tortured,
but yes, I think and actuallybringing this back to one of my
roles where I'm at CompanionAnimals New Zealand, our big
push in that organization is notjust that they're not suffering,
they've got a good life.
Like that's our motto what canwe do to make sure that they
(47:33):
actually have a good life?
And I feel like I don't want tojust say the technologies are
the solution to everything, butthey're definitely the solution.
in a large herd environmentwhere 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.
(47:54):
Like my phone tells me, when mygoat needs to get a little bit
more exercise, it's awesome.
Sarah (48:01):
would love that.
And I think What I really wantis the good life for a goat to
be defined by the animalscientists that also consider
ourselves food animal scientistsand not people who want to say
goats are little humans.
You know what I mean?
Right?
So that good life, and you can'tsee me because I'm doing quotes,
(48:24):
but it needs to be defined bythose of us that.
we want it all.
We want the good life and wewant the steaks, right?
We want the milk.
Gosia (48:35):
the milk.
You
Sarah (48:37):
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 ofthose boxes and all those needs
can't be met.
Gosia (48:48):
Absolutely.
Sarah (48:48):
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 18hour time difference has been a
little bit hard for us toschedule, but we've figured it
out.
So yes, we did.
Thank you very much.
And we will see you next monthon Boz and Bleats.
Gosia (49:08):
Awesome, thank you, sir.
Sarah (49:10):
know, I won't let, it's not giving me an option to stop.
What's happening?
Gosia (49:15):
Oh, yeah, I'm not able to either.
So, hmm.
Sarah (49:20):
Well, I'm going to hit leave, so I might lose you, but
I don't know why it's notstopping.
So I'm going to try leave.
Thank you so much.
If you ever need anything frommy side of the world, let me
know.
Yeah.
Gosia (49:34):
Awesome.
Sarah (49:36):
it was great.
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