How Zinc Deficiency Affects Goats

Reader Contribution by Carrie Miller and Miller Micro Farm
Published on March 20, 2019
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While goats can suffer from many different mineral and vitamin deficiencies, zinc is the one that we have been dealing with here on our farm. Can you love your goats too much? Can you feed them so well you are hurting them? The answer is yes! This is exactly what we found out we were doing.

While loose mineral is always available to our goats it was not enough to stop a Zinc deficiency storm from running through our herd. It all started when we got our first boys last fall. The buck, Harry, looked a bit rough and his coat was dull, straggly, and even appeared bleached out. After doing some research and with the advice of our vet we treated him with a copper bolus. After a few months, we noticed his coat began to soften and appeared darker in color so with thought we had the problem licked.

Then the second boy, Mikey, began to look “off”, diarrhea shortly followed. Weeks of diarrhea! We treated for everything under the sun and little to no improvement was seen. I contacted his original owner and she said to give him a quarter cup of black oiled sunflower seeds a day. Ok? Desperate to help I followed her plan of action. He began to slowly get better, thank god! But why did sunflower seeds help?

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