I just had a buckling die. He was a twin. I got them and they were too young 4-5 weeks. I bottle fed both of them for several weeks, provided water, hay minimal grains. I weaned them from milk and they were fine. I kept them away from my other goats for 3-4 weeks. Then I introduced them and it was not love at first sight. The larger goats were rough with them, but the bucklings stuck together and all seemed well. They were all together during the day and separate at night.
Last weekend, the boys were fine in the morning, but by lunch one of them looked depressed. Moving less, separate from his brother and was foaming brownish liquid from his mouth as he chewed his cud. When I picked him up, he burped and made sounds to indicate there was pain. I checked everything I could to try and figure it out and then I called the vet and brought him in immediately.
His temp was low (89), he was eating, drinking, urinating and had goat pellets. He had slow rumenations. She gave him something like pepto, a shot of b vitamins and said to keep him warm, give him Gatorade in water and yogurt. He probably got into something, likely a plant poisoning type thing and he would be better in a few days. I followed the directions and he seemed to perk up, but he was walking on his front knees (back legs were fine). He still had minimal brown drooling, but seemed visibly very thin where he had not before. I continued the Gatorade in water, yogurt and feeding only hay. The drooling stopped, but he kept walking on his knees. He stood and walked if prompted, but seemed wobbly. He looked even more thin. Everything remained status quo for 3 days and then I found him dead. It seemed like he wasted away, but was eating and drinking fine. If he had gotten into something poisonous then he would have been over it and not dead.
I have looked and looked. Read and read. There was the idea from the receptionist at the vet of CAE because she had just read something on that, but with the other symptoms and his twin fine it just doesn't add up. I have found several different things that sound like part of it, but nothing sounds like all of these symptoms or describes what happened to him.
If anyone has any insight or ideas, please let me know.
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It's an old idea -- and completely wrong -- that if one animal in a herd has parasites they all do. When I was learning about parasites a few years ago, I had a buck die. He was loaded with barberpole worm! I tried herbal dewormers and then chemical, and I kept doing fecals, and nothing was taking down the number of eggs. He was unable to walk for the last few days of his life, and when he finally died, I was SO tempted to follow the old advice of vets -- give all the bucks in his pen a dose of dewormer because they all must have them. But instead, I did fecals on the boys. And not a single one of them had anywhere near the number of eggs that he did. In fact some of them had next to nothing. None of the had enough of a load to require deworming. I didn't deworm a single other goat, and they were all fine. I've also seen this with lice, which seems even more "illogical" because they're an external parasite. If an animal's immune system is down or they get stressed, they can get a terrible overgrowth of parasites. This is why you're wasting your money when deworming goats without doing a fecal or checking FAMACHA scores or body condition, etc.
You can easily do a necropsy within 24 hours. If it's going to be longer, just refrigerate them. You can even freeze them and still be able to do most of the necropsy work. Tissue samples may not be good if they've been frozen, but they can still look at the intestines, lungs, brain, etc, and they can do micronutrient levels on the liver. In fact, I freeze livers before shipping to the lab for copper and selenium levels.
Since I found him in the evening, I didn't think I could do a necropsy. There was no fecal done. I have thought about parasites, but with the twin I would expect it to be similar. He shared hay with the rest of the goats and the llama in there winter area. No one else is showing signs of anything. It is the same hay I have fed all the animals this winter not a different supplier. This is why I am so baffled. Thank you for your ideas.
I haven't heard of anything like this. It probably would have been worth it to have a necropsy done. If it was poisoning, at least you'd know what was problematic in your pasture.
Did the vet do a fecal? Just curious because this type of decline sometimes happens in goats that are dieing from anemia, although I'm not sure about the brown foaming at the mouth. It could have been a combination of poisoning and anemia. Sometimes there is more than one answer. When my doe died last month, I had a necropsy done because she had classic symptoms of milk fever, but the necropsy showed pneumonia and mastitis, even though she didn't have any outward symptoms of either!