I have two bucks right now. One is 2 1/2 years old and the other is 8 weeks old. The baby got diarrhea really bad and I thought it might be because he had started to eat a little grain and I was weaning him, but then the older buck started to get diarrhea so I did a fecal float and the baby is loaded with coccidia and a few stomach worms. The older one has coccidia also, but not quite as bad as the baby. My mentor said to give the baby 1cc of Di-Methox right then and then 1/2 cc morning and night for 7 days. The older buck got 6cc of Di-Methox and 3cc everyday for seven days. I have been doing that for 4 days now, and they are not any better. The baby did stop grinding his teeth and his diarrhea isn't just water anymore, but now he is straining so bad that he cries when trying to go to the bathroom. I am so worried that I am going to lose them. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I do not have a vet within 2 hours that knows anything about goats. Oh, as far as eating and drinking goes, my mentor said to add back the two bottles I had already weaned from the little one but give half water and half milk for those two. He still gets full milk in his night bottle. He is drinking almost all of those. No grain, very little hay. He nibbles on the grass in his yard, but not much. The older buck is still eating one cup of grain and tons of hay and grass. He never misses a meal, no matter what! However, he is not drinking as much water as he was, which worries me a lot. I think that's everything, but if I forgot some piece of info that you might need to know, just ask. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
You need to be a member of Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats to add comments!
Replies
Update:
I thought I would let everyone know that after the Di-Methox treatment I ran another fecal. There were only 2 cocci on each slide. However, they both still had diarrhea. I took them to the vet, which almost killed the baby, but we got there. They had a combination of barberpole and liver flukes which apparently look very similar and he said many people miss on the slides, including vets. He recommended giving them a triple dose of Safeguard over three days and Ivomec Plus twice. Once right then and then again in ten days. My boys are better! Thanks for your help and advice.
Oh good, thank you Deborah for explaining that! Now I won't have to feel bad about giving it to them. I feel so much better about the things that we can offer and trust them to use if they need them! I just couldn't imagine that I had spoke of doing this and no one had warned me if it was a problem! So glad to hear this!
Thanks for your thoughts on the baking soda, Deborah. I know I've read a couple of times not to give it to bucks, but I can't remember where. You could be right that it's just some bit of misinformation that is spreading around.
If I remember right, the dewormer that has caused real problems with bloat for her was Valbazen. Once she also dosed a pen of bucks with positive pellet and they all bloated mildly, but she doesn't know if there's a link there or not. With the Valbazen, it happened a number of times, so now she just doesn't give any grain the day she uses it, and hasn't had a problem since.
I had never heard anyone say NOT to give bucks baking soda until maybe this past year. I am wondering if someone just maybe jumped to the conclusion that baking soda would reduce the acidity of the urine, and now it is getting repeated around the Internet. If there is some recent research that shows that, I would love to see it. I don't normally have baking soda out for my bucks, but that's because I don't give them grain. When we have a super cold winter, and I give them grain to keep weight on them, I do put out free choice baking soda.
Feeding baking soda would not cause urinary calculi, even if it did decrease the acidity of the urine (which I don't think it does). Feeding too much grain causes urinary calculi because it throws off the mineral balance, and as the buck is trying to excrete the excessive minerals in its urine, it is at a level at which the minerals can't stay dissolved, according to Goat Medicine, meaning stones will form from the excess minerals. The benefit of the ammonium chloride is that it acidifies the urine, keeping the minerals from forming stones in the urine. But if the bucks are not receiving too much grain to begin with, their body won't be trying to excrete the excess minerals through their urine, so you won't have a problem with stones, regardless of whether you're giving ammonium chloride or baking soda.
Although I've never had a problem with a goat getting sick when combining grain and dewormer, I can see how that could happen after all the reading I did when writing my goat book. Either grain or a dewormer (or just about anything new or different) can upset a goat's rumen, so it makes total sense that if a goat was sort of sensitive to grain anyway, that combining that with a dewormer could cause a problem for them. Just curious if the dewormer used was one of the white dewormers because they have been linked to thiamine deficiency. Thiamine is normally made in the goat's rumen, so it doesn't normally need to be ingested, and when a goat's rumen gets upset, it can do all sorts of things like bloat or stop producing thiamine. That's why a goat can become thiamine deficient when it gorges itself on grain.
That is nice to know too! I'll have to remember that!
I understand just what you mean about that. Not long after I got my 9 young does from Mexico, I noticed that poor Popcorn went off feed and I am not sure what made me realize what was wrong but for some reason I knew and I was panicked because I knew what it was and I knew about how people poke a hole in the rumen, but that I did not know how to do it. But when I gave them the B S she pigged on it and like you said she still wasn't quite normal the next morning but I could tell that it really helped a lot and I totally felt like if she had not had it, she probably would have died. I was so happy that I at least knew to give it to her.
Oh, Margaret, I know! I really love having it in the does stall, because there are nights when one of them eats it ALL, and I feel like it could have been a bad thing if they didn't have it. In fact, when one of my does ate all of it one night, she was still a bit bloated and uncomfortable in the morning, and wasn't interested in her grain in the AM. In fact, I had to get her up on her feet and lift her onto the milk stand, she was that uncomfortable. I drenched her with peanut oil and massaged her rumen until she started burping. After an hour or two she was perfectly normal. I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't had the baking soda during the night?
So far, though, with the bucks on hay and browse only, there have been zero cases of need for baking soda at all. The same as young does not on grain, just hay and browse. I feel like grain is the big culprit. My breeder friend also says that when she deworms, she never gives grain that day as with some dewormers they have bloated badly when given grain the same day. Interesting observation on her part...
OK! I may have jumped the gun there. Thank You Patty!
I have done some research and although I have definitely found contradictory info I am still a bit confused on this one. I am really surprised by this because so many times when discussing diet I have listed everything I was giving and baking soda was always on that list and never did I say that I only gave it to does. Always I listed what I feed everyone. No one ever caught that I guess.
So now, I am at a loss as to how I would know if my boys needed some to prevent bloat if they don't have the chance to eat it when they want. It rather scares me because they can really be piglets.
Just when you think you figure something out you realize you haven't!
Umm...actually, I think the bucks shouldn't have baking soda, as it would reduce the acidity of the urine. This isn't something you want with bucks as it could cause urinary calculi. I've never given baking soda to my bucks. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.
However, I think Mana Pro minerals (my personal favorite) has both baking soda and ammonium chloride in it. This seems strange to me since to my thinking they would cancel each other out. Any thoughts, anyone?
At any rate, I wish you the very best with your boys. I can sympathize with you about that drive. If I need a vet for anything related to an animal other than cat/dog, it's a 3 hour drive one way. :(
Margaret Langley said:
LOL! Sometimes it feels that way! But it is nerve racking, to say the least when we have to struggle through trying to help them and aren't sure what to do! That's what makes it so nice to have this network of help and support! Hope they get better soon!
Thank you Margaret. I was worried about it causing the urinary stones. Deborah...I know they don't have tapeworms, but I am worried about my identification. I am using the pictures from Fiasco Farm. The eggs that look like coccidia to me look exactly like the pic they have listed of cocci at 410 magnification, but on my microscope they look like that at 100 magnification. I am very confused about that. They look just like an egg with the yolk in the middle. There was also what I think was one brown stomach worm, one barberpole, two liver flukes, and one thread necked nematode. The brown stomach worm I saw on the baby's slide along with a lot of what I think are coccidia. The coccidia were smaller than the stomach worm. The others were on the older buck's slide. The numbers of the other worms were so low that I didn't think they would be the culprit, but I felt like nothing was working so I got the Safeguard. The coccidia was in my scope no matter where I moved it. I would say the numbers of cocci were close to 100 for the baby and about half that for the older buck.
I guess now that I wormed them, if they aren't better in 24 hours, I will try to drive them to my nearest vet. I just hope the drive doesn't stress them too much. Neither of them liked driving in the truck even though they were inside. And that was only an hour drive. This would be 4 hours round trip! I'm the one that's going to need to be medicated by the time this is over...that or a straight jacket!
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next