# The wether report:  Scours, with tinge of blood.



## cmjust0 (Sep 30, 2009)

So, my wife calls yesterday and said her beloved wether was scouring.  Color?  "Greenish brown."  Consistency? "Pretty runny."  Runny, or watery?  "Runny, I guess."  Blood?  "Not that I could see"

Dietary.  He'll be fine.  Just keep an eye on him, not much to really worry about unless it goes watery, mucousy, bloody, etc..

She calls back later..."Now it's watery."  Color?  "Yellowish"  Blood?  "Yeah, a little bit.  I'm really worried about him.  He's grinding his teeth and doesn't want to be fooled with.  He went into the barn and is standing there by himself."

Well...crap.

Blood and yellow water, to me, warrants treatment, so I ask her to drench him with about 12ml of Di-Methox 40% injectable, which she does.  

I'm a little worried myself at this point...that was awfully quick, because he was FINE yesterday..  I'm thinking bacterial.  Salmonella?  E.coli?  Cl. Perf?

She calls back after the di-methox to see what else she can do, so I ask if she thinks she can get about 1.5ml of banamine in him, delivered IM...to relax the gut, bring down a fever (if any), and knock the pain down a little.

"Um..  By myself?" she says..  That means no.  I can understand that, as I somehow wound up being the "the shots guy" and this wether probably weighs 175lbs.  So...I leave work about an hour and a half early.  

I stopped at TSC on the way home and picked up a bottle of C & D antitoxin, just in case, even though he just had a C/D-T booster 6mo ago..  I also grabbed some electrolytes.

As I pull up at the house, I'm expecting to see everyone else out grazing with him laid up in the barn and my wife holding vigil...but no...he's out with the herd.  Grazing.  When I walk over, he comes to greet me with the rest of them. 

Hmm..  :/

He has a poopy butt, but all I see is green sludge.  He goes to poo again and the tiniest bit of water comes out.  I was pretty relieved, but my wife was still really upset.  She showed me the blood she wiped off his bum, but I didn't know if it was from straining or toxin or what..  

Oh well...he's getting banamine anyway, and pepto, if only because I didn't leave work early for nothing.  

First try with banamine, he goes sauntering off with a syringe dangling out of his neck/shoulder area...it falls out, needle goes in dirt.  New needle, try again.  Blow new needle off syringe, banamine right in the eye...MY eye.  That stings.  Try three, switch to luer lock syringe and put his ass in the stanchion.  No sweat this time (imagine that)..  

Give him pepto, which he resists until he tastes it...not so bad, huh?

We throw hay just to see if he'll eat....buries his head in the feeder and starts knocking other goats outta the way, as always.  

My wife felt much better.

I was both relieved that he seemed so OK, and somewhat amused at all the ado over what seems to be a fairly run of the mill round of dietary scour.  I also felt appreciated.  Not by the wether -- he hated me for a while there -- but by my wife.  That always feels good.  

And my eye still hurt a little.

Wether seemed fine this morning.  No new sludge...old sludge seems to be drying, so I'd say he's loafy already.  Rumen was nice and bouncy...not hollow, not tight.  No teeth-grinding.  If he's loafy or clumpy pellets this afternoon, he'll get probiotics and we're done.


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## ksalvagno (Sep 30, 2009)

Is this the same guy with the UC problems? At least he is better now. Always something with animals. Hope it was just a one day thing. When you work hard on a sick animal, you definitely get more attached. 

I thought Banamine was supposed to help with pain, not cause it! I guess it doesn't work for human eyes. So don't use it for eye pain!


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## cmjust0 (Sep 30, 2009)

Different goat..  This one's a big ol' sweetheart of a pet wether who runs with our primary herd of does, serving mostly to eat lots of hay and screw with the feeding and mineral regimen by forcing me to think about things like UC and other male-related issues when I otherwise wouldn't have to..  

He also happens to be my wife's "scapegoat"...the one she lays all her troubles and sorrows on.  He's big and strong, so he carries her worries off to pasture with hardly an effort.  Should something terrible befall this goat, ours would be a sad, sad house indeed.

And...yes, banamine HURTS!  

I shot him in the neck/shoulder area, and he stomped his foot for a little while.  I've heard of folks cutting banamine with B12 to reduce the sting, so I'll probably look for some B12 at some point after having had a little taste of the experience first hand.  Suffice it to say that I wouldn't want a pocket of that stuff in _my_ muscle..

The UC buckling is still alive and dribbling, btw..  He must have some permanent damage to his urethra from inflammation and/or scarring, but he's learned to just stretch out for a few minutes and open the faucet when he gets full.  Takes him a while, but when the dribbles trail off he just goes back to being a goat.  He's not exactly what I'd call a "success story," but he _is_ alive, eating, and not depressed or suffering, and we learned a lot from him about what to do and what not to do in the future.


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## ksalvagno (Sep 30, 2009)

Glad to hear the UC guy is still doing well too.

I didn't realize Banamine stung goats. Don't have that problem in alpacas. I knew Ivomec stings if you inject but never thought about Banamine.

Of course it never hurts for the girls to get the UC regimen since there is a possibility of them getting it too.


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## cmjust0 (Sep 30, 2009)

Wife called earlier and said it seemed to her that he was doing much better today, too.  I got a poopoo play by play, in fact.  She was standing by the kitchen window looking out at them...

"Wait a second...ok, he's lifting his tail.  I think he's gonna poop.  Yep, he's pooping."

Aaaaaaand?!?  

"Looks clumpy.  Yeah, big clumps are falling out.  ..  ...  ....  .....  Ok, he's done."

Ummm...  ...I guess?  I mean, yeah, he's clearly improving and that's excellent news, but did I really need to hear that?  I'm tryin to work over here...


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## ksalvagno (Sep 30, 2009)

Why, was it interfering with your photobombing search? 

Always good when a simple fix takes care of the problem.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 1, 2009)

ksal said:
			
		

> Why, was it interfering with your photobombing search?


    

Yep.  

He seemed fine last night, so he got a little probiotic.  All done (knock on wood).


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## Beekissed (Oct 12, 2009)

Here's an interesting article you might find helpful in treating your goats.  I've been reading about all the multiple health problems they have and it seems like you could use all the help you could get!   

http://www.naturalark.com/natacv.html

And I know this one is about sheep, but it just may work for goats as well!

http://www.sheepmagazine.com/issues/24/24-1/Laurie_Ball-Gisch.html


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## cmjust0 (Oct 13, 2009)

I've done a bit of reading on ACV before, but only for urinary calculi..  Lots of people say it prevents UC, but the acidic component is acetic acid, which a goat makes a ton of naturally..  Kinda always seemed to me that an ACV drench would be a drop in the bucket..

I drenched a UC buck with ACV, too, because I didn't have any ammonium chloride...no help.  

Thing is, aside from this recent bout with scour, our goats have always been really healthy.  This gut bug -- whatever it was -- totally took us by surprise.

Maybe I'll do a bit more reading on ACV, though..  I ran across the thing about the doeling/buckling kid ratio after adding ACV, and that may be worthwhile.


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## ksalvagno (Oct 13, 2009)

Unfortunately, every farm seems to go through a year when animals get sick with something weird and it goes through their herd. I have had my years too. The longer you are in animals, the more you see and the more you deal with. Just a part of livestock ownership.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 13, 2009)

It's been a really hard year for goats in this area..  Too wet, too little sun, not enough hot days to dry things out..  

I've heard of at least two people who have had goats to just up and die, right out of the blue, then bloat up huge immediately afterward..  I mean, any ruminant that dies with a full rumen is going to bloat, but the way this is described is as though it's notably different than what's normally seen..  Nobody knows what that is, and UK's livestock diagnostic lab is pretty much ZERO help..  

I've known a couple of folks to have goats that begin to scour and don't respond to anything...wormer doesn't work, sulfas don't work, antibiotics don't work...then they just get progressively weaker until they go completely anorexic, dehydrate, and die in a week or so..  Nobody knows what that's doing that, either..

Everybody I've talked to has had at least some foot problems in their herds this year, be it rot or scald or whatever..  

We had skin problems in one of our does that turned out to be a bacterial infection..  Dermatophilosis, aka "rain rot," as best we could tell..

I've heard of several cases of UC this year in young bucks and wethers, too..  I think that could possibly be on account of it having been so cool this summer that it didn't really promote the consumption of very much water.

It's just a bad year all around, it seems.


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