How to Drain an Abscess on a Goat- With Video
A goat can develop an abscess when bacteria multiplies under the skin. This can happen if the animal has cut itself on fencing or anything else that might puncture the skin.
Abscesses can also be caused by a chronic and contagious disease called Caseous Lymphadenitis or CL. You can have your vet run tests for you if you think CL might be the issue. If CL is present in your goat, you will need to separate it from the rest of your herd and treat appropriately.
How to Drain an Abscess on a Goat
Abscesses aren’t fun and you definitely don’t want to risk spreading a contagious infection to the rest of your herd. Luckily, draining an abscess is a pretty simple procedure.
We had to drain an abscess recently when the largest goat in our herd, a sweet Nubian named Jewel, developed a large abscess on her neck. We treated her with penicillin to try to dry it up without lancing, but that didn’t do the trick (it usually won’t but it’s worth a shot). Draining and flushing the abscess was our next step.
You can watch the video tutorial to see exactly what we did.
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Have these items ready before starting:
- Gloves
- Sterile Room Temp. Water mixed with 10% Iodine
- Sterile Scalpel
- Garbage Bag
- Sterile Syringe
- Iodine Spray
Steps to Drain an Abscess:
STEP #1
Move the animal to an isolation pen in case the infection is contagious (like Caseous Lymphadenitis-CL).
STEP #2
Place a garbage bag, tarp, or anything else that will keep pus off the floor under the animal. This makes for easily clean up and a sanitary pen.
STEP#3
Put a sterile pair of gloves on. We wear gloves while draining to avoid introducing any new bacteria to the goat and to keep the pus off of our hands.
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STEP #4
If you have someone helping you, have him / her hold the animal steady. if you are working alone, however, you can tie the animal securely while you work.
STEP #5
Lance at the lowest point possible on the abscess with your sterile scalpel. Cutting the lowest point makes draining easier.
The bottom of Jewel’s abscess had hardened a bit so I had to cut up a little higher than we wanted to. Try to do this part quickly and accurately as it is obviously uncomfortable for the animal.
STEP #6
Push out all of the pus that you can because an abscess will not heal unless it is free of pus.
STEP #7
Use the syringe and water/iodine solution to flush the rest of the infection out. To do this, fill the sterile syringe with the solution, insert the tip of the syringe into the lanced area, and push the solution through the wound to flush.
STEP #8
Next, spray the affected area heavily with iodine.
STEP #9
Isolate and monitor the animal. We kept Jewel in the isolation pen for about 3 days to keep a close eye on her and to ensure that the infection was gone before re-introducing her to the herd. A few days after treatment, she was all healed up & happy!
STEP #10
Add this procedure to the Goat Medical Record within the Goat Record Book for the treated goat.
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In lieu of iodine, have you considered tea tree oil? I have not used iodine in more years than I can count. I am steadily moving to natural medicine for all my needs. I raised goats as a young man and hope to start a new homestead within the next few years. I am 63 now.
You know, I use Tea Tree Oil for lots of different uses, but I have never considered it for open wound care. TTO absolutely makes sense here and it seems to be a pretty common practice. Thank you for mentioning this 🙂 I do have one post on natural goat care if you are interested in checking that out…https://mamaonthehomestead.com/natural-goat-care/
How much do you dilute the Iodine with the sterile water? I can’t find anywhere that says how much of the 10% Iodine you mix with how much water.
We actually didn’t use a specific ratio of water to iodine. You can just add the water until it the solution is a light tea color.
My holistic go to for these things said using peroxide would work. She’s used it on her goats with success. Any insight?
Also, if we lanced and drained abscess like your video shows, it began closing over within hours. Now it’s scanning but got hard?
It was super loose skin after draining it, but now healing nicely as far as the incision goes but it’s hard now? Strange and wondering why?
Thanks!
Hey, Angela! I think we chatted about this over email (because I missed this comment:/), but I want to answer here, too… Peroxide is probably just fine, we prefer using iodine, though.Our goat’s incision scabbed over and healed pretty well within a week.
Did you culture the abscess for CL? If so, where did you obtain your supplies for culture and where did you send the specimen? I have a goat with an intact lesion and am wondering if I need to send a culture to lab to determine next steps.
Thanks in advance. Barb