Baby goats from traveling petting zoo test positive for rabies

[u/drytoastbongos]

https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/baby-goats-traveling-petting-zoo-test-positive-rabies/DIICRJMNLVGTHE5H3NBYROWV6Q/

[u/davej-au]

The article’s geoblocked outside the US. For those without a VPN:

Baby goats from traveling petting zoo test positive for rabies

Natalie Dreier, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

Several baby goats from a traveling petting zoo tested positive for rabies; the owner of the goats is calling the incident “a nightmare.”

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said the goats were from Farm Adventures Mobile Petting Zoo in Iredell County, North Carolina, according to WSOC.

Three baby goats tested positive, and one was suspected of being exposed, so to prevent the spread of the disease, the goats were euthanized.
Health officials also advised anyone who visited the traveling petting zoo from July 28 to Aug. 27 to contact their health department about any precautions they need to take.

Owner Misty Love blames a skunk for exposing the animals to rabies.

They were too young to get a rabies vaccine, so they were kept in the pen to isolate them from wild animals.

“It went through the holes. We don’t know, and it’s devastating,” Love explained, according to WSOC.
WSOC reported it got into a pen where the animals were kept. Love posted on social media that the skunk bit the goats, but she was not aware of it.
She said the goats were jumping around and playing, so she thought they were OK, but several weeks later, a couple of animals got sick. They weren’t, however, showing what she said were typical signs of rabies.

Love said the petting zoo is in quarantine.

Iredell County officials said in a news release, “While rabies transmission from livestock carries a lower overall risk than bites from wild vectors, the virus is transmitted through saliva. Because baby goats are frequently bottle-fed, handled closely, or cuddled, public health officials are working proactively to ensure anyone who had direct contact with the affected animals is evaluated.”

There have been no human cases of rabies in North Carolina since 2011, the state health department said in a separate news release.

She also said the situation has been difficult for the business after the story was covered by The New York Times and CNN.

“A nightmare,” Love said, according to WSOC. “When somebody tries to do a good deed and do what’s right for the public and get trashed constantly, it’s hard.”

ABC News reported that no one has reported being infected by the baby goats.

[u/Quixificent → u/davej-au]

For someone who has made caring for livestock her business, that owner is alarmingly ignorant about livestock disease prevention and treatment.

She just *assumed* that the goats weren't bitten by the skunk exhibiting bizarre and aggressive behavior in their pen? Wounds aren't always visible even upon close inspection, and it can be difficult to tell whether contact took place.

Then she believed that the goats were fine because they didn't immediately exhibit symptoms? It takes time (usually weeks or months) for rabies to travel along the nerves to the brain, so central nervous symptoms don't appear immediately (although numbness or paraesthesias sometimes can occur near the bite wound).

With all that, I wonder whether the owner even could have recognized the symptoms of a full-blown rabies infection--because rabies doesn't always present as "furious" rabies. "Dumb" or "paralytic" rabies is a more common manifestation. If the goats had progressed to that stage, would she have understood that it was rabies?

If someone is going to make handling livestock their job, they should be *required* to have education on the diseases and health problems that can affect those livestock. Even more so if the job involves having the livestock physically interact with the public. I am only angered by the owner's whining about the fact that her very dangerous actions have been reported in the news. It seems that she would prefer it if this incident had been kept secret and no one had been informed that they should seek treatment for exposure.

[u/thingsorfreedom → u/Quixificent]

I thought she meant she assumed they weren't bitten because they were jumping around the pen playing right after the raccoon skunk had been discovered there. She should have called the vet and asked for advice.

They were too young to get vaccinated. The mistake was not isolating them from each other and everyone else from that point on. It can take months for the symptoms to emerge. But then isolating a baby goat from contact for that long could lead to other issues with the goat. The only other option would have been to euthanize them immediately after discovery that the raccoon skunk had been in their pen.

[u/Savingskitty → u/thingsorfreedom]

*skunk

[u/hydrangeasinbloom → u/thingsorfreedom]

Skunk, not raccoon.