Meningeal Worm
How it affected our herd
The information contained on the following page is from our experiences and directly from Finales Release form Ohio State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital and the progress notes that Dr. Hull so generously copied for us. There is an update at the end of how she has progressed since she has been home. I have also included some links to get more information from other sources.
Meningeal worm infestation is often times
confused with other injuries or diseases. Such as Listeria, polioencephaolmalesia,
spinal injury and meningitis, often times the goat is
euthenized because no diagnosis has been made. We believe that several
years ago, over a period of a couple years that we ourselves lost three does to
this, thinking that is was a spinal injury or something else. I will
forever regret not getting a spinal tap done to find out if it was the Meningeal
worm. When we lost the third doe, we had suspected Meningeal worm, but because of what we
had read on the worm did not feel she could recover, as she was down and almost paralyzed
in the hind quarters. But after seeing how bad Finale got, we know now it
would of been possible for the does, all three of them to pull though. One
of the three does we did loose though died of bloat, during the night she had
laid down in a low spot in her pen and could not get up, her head was lower than
her hind end. She was laying peacefully when we left from chores that
night, but she apparently moved got in a position that prevented her from up righting
herself and we found her bloated and dead the next morning.
Before we had taken finale to OSU, in early November she came in with a spot on her shoulder that looked like a scrape. We also had several other does with similar skin lesions. This group of goats had also escaped through an old fence several times, seemed like no matter where we fixed it they got out. So the skin lesions were injuries assumed from going though the fence or getting caught in it. By late November this is what Finales neck looked like after it had started to heal. Unfortunately did not get any pictures of it at its worst.
The lesions seemed to itch intensely.
We scrubbed them with Nolvasan wash and put the Nolvasan cream on them.
That did not seem to help so we switched to Band-Aid anti-bacterial wash and
antibiotic cream with pain reliever. That was not working either. So on
some 
we tried, gentocin pinkeye spray and on others furox. Nothing was
working. The afflicted areas just kept getting bigger and bigger, with
finale and a few others literally digging holes in their hides. They would
come in a bloody mess. We had to put turtle neck shirt on them with the
neck part covered with duck tape to keep the neck part in place and
that seemed
to help as they could not itch them as much. Then we started putting Blue
Kote on the afflicted areas. But by then it seemed they had quit itching as
badly.
We had seven does with the skin problem, some not as severe as others. five of the seven had some pretty large areas of bare raw skin. The other two lost their hair and had bare skin, but not with with the intense itching the others had. Those two does seemed to have the hair grow back sooner. Of the five that were the worst, three showed signs of weakness in the hind quarters, Finale being the worst and hers came on over a period of about 5 days. The other two, which were young does, six and nine months of age, were lame all of a sudden with none of the skin lesions.
First days home and her progress
More recent cases of Meningeal worm.