A treatment and possible cure for bottle jaw in goats might exist. I care for 21 ram/sheep hybrids which are very susceptible to bottle jaw. I’ve looked all around the internet for help with no avail. I started using my own critical thinking to narrow down the possibilities when I discovered the bacteria that causes bottle jaw also causes mal-absorption in the intestines. The issue is the animal has to much rough bile that is causing scaring to the intestine so the old bile needs to be removed causing the animal diarrhea and slowly wasting away due to them not being able to store nutrients. A roughly 200 mg dose of niacin administered orally once a day can remove all physical distress signs from both swelling from bottle jaw and diarrhea in adult male goats. I have not tried this with females yet and I do not know of it is a permanent cure or just a temporary treatment for the symptoms. It appears the niacin helps to flush the system of the bacteria without causing further damage to goats rumen. The diarrhea has stopped and the swelling has gone away and this is day 4 of the treatment. Each day we are seeing a great increase in the animals health, there is no cracking noise from bottle jaw and he is walking around fine like he has energy again. I will make a new posting in a few weeks as a follow up.
