Have you seen these symptoms in a fellow board member?

Goats are tough, spirited animals. But they’re no match for scrapie, a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. In goats—and sheep—the degenerative disease causes tremors, lip-smacking, weight loss, a hopping gait, and other peculiar symptoms. Scrapie-afflicted animals cannot be cured, and they eventually die.

If so there may be hope:

The good news is that a new, live-animal test to detect scrapie is being applied to goats. There’s also an ongoing study of goat genes that might confer resistance to the disease.

The new method, known as the “rectal mucosal-associated lymphoid tissue (RMALT) test,” is based on the currently used third-eyelid test. Developed by the Agricultural Research Service and Washington State University (WSU), the third-eyelid test has been used by APHIS and state veterinarians since 2002 as an official test to detect scrapie in sheep. It involves snipping a tiny piece of lymphoid tissue from the animal’s nictitating membrane, or third eyelid, staining it with antibodies, and examining it under a microscope. Lymphoid tissue is used because it tends to collect malformed proteins called “prions,” which are thought to cause scrapie.

So keep your snippers handy.