Another doe with scours...already lost one.

cmjust0

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Some of you guys may have seen my post over in "Everything Else Goats" about losing a doe the other night..

Well, we had another one start downhill yesterday afternoon. Full sister to the one we lost.. She's a 19mo doe.. Extremely rapid onset of watery, mucousy (then slightly bloody) scours accompanied by depression and anorexia..

My wife gave 3cc's Scour-Halt (spectinomycin) by mouth plus 1.3ml banamine IM at about 3pm yesterday, as soon as symptoms were noticed. She'd been perfect late in the evening before. Gave 2.5ml of Naxcel and 6ml of B-complex at about 6pm, as soon as I could get home with the Naxcel.. Pepto later, and Probios.. Electrolytes (1 packet Re-Sorb in 2qts warm water) by mouth.

She grazed and browsed a little here and there before sundown...I hand-fed her clean, long grass from outside their pasture and she seemed to like that.. She was pretty eager to eat osage leaves too, if I pulled the high limbs down for her.. Ate a few apple tree leaves my wife plucked for her, as well..

Her appetite sounds better than it actually was, though.. She was only very intermittantly interested in eating.. She'd perk up for a minute and act interested in food, then go very still for a good while...just like the other two. Everyone else was chowing down.

Her ears began getting cold pretty quickly after the sun went down and I knew her mouth would be soon to follow...in my experience, when the mouth goes cold, they're basically already gone. We brought them to the barn for hay, but she wasn't interested. We knew she wouldn't last very long in the cold barn with an empty rumen, so we brought her in the house and turned up the heat to get her nice and toasty. She was a bottle-baby, so being with us instead of the rest of the herd isn't much of a stressor...quite possibly more comforting, in fact, since her much beloved sister's gone now. We're thinking the stress of losing her sister may be a contributing factor, actually..

Gave more pepto a few hours after the first dose.. She had several rounds of diarrhea after bringing her in...watery, mucousy, plus some blood later on. Not much teeth-grinding, but some.

Continuing oral electrolytes every few hours...she's had probably close to 3 quarts as of this morning, I guess.. She's still somewhat dehydrated, but not terribly so.. That is to say, her upper eyelids don't exactly "snap" back into place if you pinch them up, but they don't hold any of the pinch for very long at all..

She rested well, I think.. Little groaning noises, but her mama does that too.. Could be nothing, could be pain. She's on her brisket with her head up, which seems good. Is alert to noises and movement.

Her last round of diarrhea was about 1:30am, so my wife hit her with 3ml of Scour-Halt again at 3am, about 12hrs after the first dose. I don't mean to say that she went back to pellets or anything -- just that as of 8am when I left, she hadn't had a BM of any kind since 1:30 when she had a pretty good scour.

Scour-Halt, btw, is VERY off label -- for any ruminant, in fact -- and there's not a lot of good dosage/limit info out there. I've read that every 12hrs is OK, though rumor has it that you can stop peristalsis with Scour-Halt. That's worrisome, but the wether got two doses and lived (he's doing great so far, btw[knock on wood]) and it's just an antibiotic...if it can really halt peristalsis, it almost has to do so by killing too much good bacteria, which is why we followed with probios a few hours after each dose of Scour-Halt.

I'm hoping maybe one of you guys has some good real-world experience with Scour-Halt?

She got her second 2.5ml dose of Naxcel at 6am, plus another 6ml of b-complex.. Electrolytes are ongoing, as I said.. Gave fenbendazole last night, too, just because...if the condition is being impacted by parasites, we figured it couldn't hurt.. Fenbendazole kills giardia, too, though I don't think that's what this is.

She perked up momentarily this morning and actually took a few bites of hay at maybe 6:30am.. We were EXTREMELY encouraged to see her eat, considering that her sister was already cold-mouthed and quite dehydrated by this point in her progression....knocking on wood again..

Wanna hear something that REALLY sucks? The vet's office LOST the last fecals which were supposed to have gone to the diagnostic lab so we'd know what we were fighting.. Those results would have been done, like, oh I dunno...right about NOW had they actually turned them in..

:somad

I went to the vet's office, picked up the accession form, and ran some out there myself this morning. They're running an aerobic culture (said it will find things like e. coli and salmonella, so... :idunno ), though we probably won't know anything for a while..

So...to run it all down...she's getting Scour-Halt every 12 until the scours clear, already had Banamine, 2.5ml Naxcel 2x/day for 3 days, oral electrolytes, Pepto, Probios, warmth and shelter (our kitchen), attention, companionship and lots of love from her human parents. If she stops accepting electrolytes orally, we're set up to run SQ Ringer's -- but we reeeeally hope it doesn't come to that.. Clean, warm drinking water is always available, as well as hay. Fecal cultures are being run as we speak.

So...what more can we do? Any and all suggestions are welcome.
 

trestlecreek

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Well, I really like SMZ-TMP for these sorts of issues.

Sav-a-calf plus by drench can also keep them going while you wait for the anti-biotics do their job.

Running the fecals like you are doing should result in help here. Sounds like something is definitely running though your herd.

Have you had them johne's tested?
 

ksalvagno

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What about full bloodwork including checking selenium and copper levels and anything else they can check for with bloodwork including CAE, CL and Johnes. Also a fecal including things like giardia and crypto. How about Lepto? One other thing to check for is Emac (Eimeria macusaniensis). It is a super coccidia that they are finding in alpacas. The drug of choice to treat Emac is Marquis. Emac can only be detected in a longer run fecal test. The state lab does them here in Ohio.

It is so tough when they can't tell you what is wrong. You probably already thought of these but it is all I can think of. I have to admit I'm one to call the vet pretty quickly.

I am so sorry you are continuing to have problems.
 

lilhill

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:hit Dang it all! Prayers going up for you guys and your doe that this will turn out much better for you.
 

cmjust0

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trestlecreek said:
Well, I really like SMZ-TMP for these sorts of issues.
Gimme a link, if you can...I'll have to buy it online, as I've never seen it available locally. If she breaks through on the Scour-Halt, I'll give it a shot.

We tried di-methox on the last two, which is a sulfa though without the trimethoprim.. It kept the wether going, but the doe died. That's why I went straight to the scour halt, which seemed to have done the most good for the wether...though it may have just run its course in him naturally.. Dunno.

tc said:
Sav-a-calf plus by drench can also keep them going while you wait for the anti-biotics do their job.
All I had available to me was Re-Sorb and MannaPro Bounce Back.. If I can order the Sav-a-calf from the same place I get SMZ-TMP, that would be cool.

Heck, you could just put me together a 'wish list' if you wanted -- I'll order it.

tc said:
Running the fecals like you are doing should result in help here.
Let's hope. :fl

tc said:
Sounds like something is definitely running though your herd.
Have you had them johne's tested?
Nope...no Johne's test. No new goats, either.. This herd has been closed for 2yrs and the wether seems to have recovered..

I've never been too worried about Johne's, so I've not done much research on it.. I'll get on it.

Thanks.
 

kimmyh

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I'm so sorry you are having trouble.
 

cmjust0

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ksalvagno said:
What about full bloodwork including checking selenium and copper levels and anything else they can check for with bloodwork including CAE, CL and Johnes.
No bloodwork has been done so far. They get down so incredibly fast that I've not yet been willing to risk the stress of transporting one to the vet.

They were copper bolused and got Bo-Se not long ago...2mo's, maybe.

ksal said:
Also a fecal including things like giardia and crypto. How about Lepto? One other thing to check for is Emac (Eimeria macusaniensis). It is a super coccidia that they are finding in alpacas. The drug of choice to treat Emac is Marquis. Emac can only be detected in a longer run fecal test. The state lab does them here in Ohio.
The vet "ran a fecal" on the two samples I brought in before...which were subsequently LOST before going to the diagnostic lab for cultures..

The vet tech came out and said "I found coccidiosis and hookworms."

The fact that she said she "found coccidiosis" set off alarm bells, so I pressed her.. She eventually told me that she found what she thought were a very few coccidia cysts..."I mean, I had to really look for them" she said.

:/

The vet came out later and said it's rare that a grazing goat wouldn't carry a benign amount of coccidia...he asked me if they were on medicated grain, which they are.. Add to that the fact that they eat their grain from clean pans and that they're older, mature goats and he pretty well threw coccidiosis out the window.

As for the "hookworms," he said the best they could tell in a goat was just that there were some sort of worms present. Again, not surprising.

Here's the thing, though...this is what made me scribble a big INCONCLUSIVE on the whole "ran a fecal" fiasco in my head.. I asked the tech which sample had which, as they were from two different goats..

The one who lived had the coccidia and "hookworms," but the one who died..?

"I didn't find anything at all in that one."

:/

If anything, I would have expected it to be the other way around but...whatever. If one has X and Y in their fecal and the other doesn't, yet they're both suffering the same thing...probably not related to X and Y anyway.

Waste of time, IMO..

We'll see if the culture is anymore diagnostic..

ksal said:
It is so tough when they can't tell you what is wrong. You probably already thought of these but it is all I can think of. I have to admit I'm one to call the vet pretty quickly.

I am so sorry you are continuing to have problems.
Thanks. :hugs
 

trestlecreek

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SMZ-TMP is vet rx. Ask your vet.
It's not real expensive, but is superior to and does not compare to any sulfa on the market. I'm never without it. Hits about every bacterial gut disease out there.

The sav-a-calf plus can be bought from Jeffers for around $1.50 a pack. Has probiotics in it too, so it works to keep them alive and to straighten the gut. I found it at an Orschlen Farm store.

Johne's can be in a closed herd for 5 years before ever rearing it's ugly head. By the time it rears, around 60-70% have it already. They tend to show up with the disease at 2 years of age. They can have it at birth and then live with it for 2 years before ever coming down with one symptom. They can get it at 2 years of age and live to 8 without ever showing a symptom until the end.

Here, you can read this article to get started:
http://www.nmga.net/healthdiseaseinformation.htm

I would have the vet pull an ELISA on one of your sick animals. You need to make sure they are neg. for Johnes. If they are neg,..you can be relieved, but if positive, you would have to hurry to come up with a plan to stop the spread.
 
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