This morning when hubby went to let the boys out (1 buck, 1 weather, 3 bucklings) he noticed our buck was in a half standing position and twitching/convulsing. He thought it was a seizure but I'm not sure. After the attack, he was acting lethargic. Late this morning he was standing alone in the pasture, not moving, and "out of it", breathing very hard. I put up a sun shade, but he isn't really using it. Then he started switching again while he started to eat. He has fresh water and shade. None of my other boys show any signs of this. Does anyone have any thoughts, ideas?
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Yeah, I know:-( It is especially concerning that we don't know what he ate that made him sick. When we move their browse area, we don't exactly know what to avoid. It is not any of the usual big toxic plants for goats.
Glad he's doing better! When they get poisoned, it doesn't always have a happy ending.
Thanks for checking in. The vet thinks he ate something poisonous, but we can't figure out what. The area they are browsing in is pretty well controlled, and none of the other bucks show any signs. The good news is that he is better. The vet also gave me some activated charcoal to have on hand in case something like this happens again. The whole thing was very strange and a bit scary to watch, poor boy. But all is good now.
If he's not eating, drinking, walking around, and chewing his cud, I'd take him to the vet. This kind of behavior could be anything from poisoning with some type of neurotoxin to who knows what.
Sorry I haven't been on here much. My Internet has been going out constantly yesterday and today.
Deborah, it is really hard to describe. In all my years of various animal keeping I don't think I've seen an animal do anything like this. It doesn't look like a classic seizure where the whole body convulses, but it is not superficial twitching like when flies are biting. The best I can describe it is to liken it to when a person has a neurological disorder and their body periodically does involuntary motions. I took a little video of him doing it this afternoon and tried to upload it to the site to show but it is too big of a file and I haven't figured out how to make the file smaller. I don't hear rumen sounds. Not sure about the eyelids and fever, I'll check tomorrow. But the only other symptoms are that she seems very fatigued and out of it, not his usual playful self and not hanging with the others. He is normally a love sponge, quite frisky and playful. And he throws the sweetest kids, we really don't want to loose him. Tonight he wasn't convulsing, but he was definitely not himself. It is possible he was stung by a bee or wasp, or a snake, but would that cause this kind of behavior?
Twitching makes me think of skin moving, but convulsing sounds more like the whole body. Can you describe it more? Could he have been stung by a bee or wasp or bitten by a snake? Does he have a fever? Can you hear rumen sounds? Are his eyelids pale? Anything else?