I noticed one of our buck kids was acting a bit off... laying down, then getting up and doing this rocking horse stance that is a classic sign of enterotoxemia.
Legs spread far apart, long back hollowing out... like they are stretching sorta...He didn't seem painful but ... he kept standing funny. I saw a picture of classic enterotoxemia stance in a goat health talk when I attended the American Dairy Goat Association convention held in Ft. Collins a couple years ago. Thank goodness for the convention and thank goodness we just happened to be pulling weeds or I may not have noticed this little buck kid acting a bit funny until it was too late.
I called our goat vet. She was busy working on a ram with choke at her place and couldn't come to me, but if I could get the kid to her place, she'd be happy to have a look. She's only 10-15 minutes away so I grabbed the checkbook, the goat kid and headed on over.
She examined him - he didn't have any other clinical signs other than that rocking horse stance. She decided to treat him because she didn't want us (or her) woken up in the middle of the night with a goat kid in the throes of enterotoxemia. She gave him banamine for pain, some anti-toxin and some penicillin. She thought he'd be just fine in the morning and he was...
I'll give him penicillin the next 3 days but it looks like he's made a full recovery!
I don't know why it happened - it's never happened before, they are in a contained area, they get the same amt of milk two times a day, they don't go out on pasture, they were vaccinated. Shrug. The important thing is we caught it and he'll be fine. Our goat vet thought maybe he'd gotten a little dehydrated, slowed things down in his g.i. tract which allowed the toxins normally present to run a bit amok...
Yeesh! It's always sum'thin' out here on the farm....
6 comments:
Oh wow. Glad your little buck is better. Clostridium is a nasty little bugger. It pays to be observant.
Good Catch Shannon!!!
I've never heard anything about enterotoximia... that's pretty cool. Good job catching it early and stopping it's progression. Any idea why that little boy came down with it?
Not sure - he doesn't get grain, is fed the same amt, isn't out on pasture gorging on the lush spring grass... he was vaccinated. V
et thought he might be a bit dehydrated which caused things to slow down a bit allowing the toxins to begin proliferating.
I'm really glad we caught it at the very start...
Foxxy - me too!
Oh man..something else for me to worry about!!! Boy this taking care of stuff is hard work!! Now as for the gorging thing,,what in the world?? I read somewhere if you read up on everything and know everything then nothing happens and if you think you are prepared ...You are in for a surprise!!
He wasn't in the weed pen, and we pulled everything outta there anyway. Lucky for me, I NEVER feel fully prepared so that means nothing should ever go wrong... right? right? heh, heh.
Post a Comment