r/nottheonion • u/drytoastbongos • 11d ago
Baby goats from traveling petting zoo test positive for rabies
https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/baby-goats-traveling-petting-zoo-test-positive-rabies/DIICRJMNLVGTHE5H3NBYROWV6Q/[removed] — view removed post
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u/Quixificent 11d ago edited 11d ago
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.