Tammy: Right.

Dr. Olcott: And then I guess one of the other things that kind of gets me involved in it whether I want to or not is that there’s probably not a wonderful education system for veterinarians out there until recently in terms of preparing them to work on goats out in the field. In our curriculum we focus extensive on beef cattle and dairy cattle and swan, we do some sheep work, but the minor species are kind of left out of that, so my phone rings on a regular basis from people who’ve talked to a veterinarian already and things didn’t work out quite the way they wanted so they’re looking for additional help.

Tammy: And also there aren’t a lot of specific drugs just for goats. Is that correct?

Dr. Olcott: Well very few. Yeah they’re definitely a minor species with the FDA, so we have a few labeled-use products and unfortunately many of the label-used products are ones at antiquated drugs and not particularly effective.

Tammy: Well and talk about the difference between what labeled use is and off-label use so people will know if their vet talks to them about it.

Dr. Olcott: Okay. And let me just expand that a little bit because first of all, we have what we what we call over-the-counter drugs and those are ones that a goat owner could go to the feed store and buy from the owner of the feed store across the counter and that would be things like penicillin, tetracycline, drugs of that nature, some of the dewormers, in fact, all of the dewormers. Other drugs are prescription-legend drugs and those are ones that you can only get through a veterinarian. Now if I as a veterinarian prescribe tetracycline for you then that has become a prescription-legend drug because that came from a veterinarian. Previous Page (1)