Goat Medicine | 3 Edition

Details about Goat Medicine:

The first and second editions of Goat Medicine were well received, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to produce a third edition. Since the second edition appeared in 2009, the global landscape for veterinary medicine and for goats has continued to change. Goat numbers worldwide now exceed 1 billion, reflecting the ever-growing demand for goat products in the meat, dairy and fiber sectors and the recognition that goats are versatile, resilient and highly adaptable, making them an increasingly attractive form of hoofed livestock in regions where climate change is resulting in warmer, more arid conditions. Climate change is also affecting global patterns of disease, particularly vector-borne disease, as vector ranges expand in association with warming temperatures. This has implications for goats. Bluetongue, for example, which is transmitted by Culicoides midges, is now present in every continent except Antarctica. Its presence in Europe has been steadily expanding northward, affecting goats and other ruminant animals in countries where it had not previously been noted. There are concerns that other serious vector-borne diseases of goats, notably Rift Valley fever, may eventually become established in Europe due to warming temperatures. Other diseases, such as leptospirosis, though already present, may become more common due to increased rainfall and associated flooding. Around the time that the second edition of Goat Medicine was published, a single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) had been confirmed in a clinically normal goat at slaughter in France and it was unclear if BSE was going to emerge as an important disease in the species. However, since that report, countries throughout the European Union have conducted extensive slaughter surveillance in small ruminants, searching specifically for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. This surveillance indicates that the initial caprine BSE case was an isolated occurrence and there is little evidence that BSE is a concern in goats. Nevertheless, that same surveillance activity revealed that scrapie was occurring in goats at about the same frequency as it does in sheep, underscoring the need for practitioners to include scrapie in their diagnostic assessments of live goats showing neurological signs.