8 wk old having regurgitation issues again...suggestions needed pg 2!!

[mully]

Get rid of the milkweed as it is toxic and can kill a goat. It is one of the first things I look for in the spring. Some goats wont eat it and some will. I would give her hay and water. You might also want to give her a drench 5-10 cc depending on weight for about 3 days and you should see a big difference by Sunday. Good luck !!

 

[glenolam]

Thanks - that's the plan (to pull the milkweed). She was fine after I drenched her last night and she was up and running around this morning. No more throwing up, pooping and peeing good.

She's on hay and water, free choice, but still nurses off mom a bit (although they're being weaned this weekend by taping so I can have more milk).

It's strange that none of the other goats got sick - I haven't noticed that they avoid it when they're allowed to free range in the woods/my yard, but there's so much for them to have I don't pay attention to everything. They usually stick to the grass or oak leaves and seem to love the crab grass!

 

[cmjust0]

There's supposedly such a thing as oak leaf poisoning, too, but.....I dunno.....I know of an awful lot of goats that browse in and around oaks and I've never heard of it being a problem.

 

[glenolam]

If it is the case that oak leaves are poisonous to goats (which I've read on this site that it might just be the acorns) my goats should be dead by now. They sure love those oak leaves ....

I'm also thinking she might just have a more sensitive rumen and not digesting the more poisonous stuff as well as her family.

 

[babsbag]

Mine eat every oak leaf they can reach, and acorns are candy to them. I even cut oak branches from trees outside their pasture and give them to them. I also throw acorns in their yard and they pretend that they are on an "easter egg/acorn hunt". There are so many oak trees in my part of CA that no one could own goats if oaks were dangerous to them. It is really thier favorite/only browse in many goat's pastures. Oak and Manzanita, yummy.

 

[glenolam]

Got home several hours ago and it's the same thing....full of puke and messy stuff.



2 hours later, she's fine and running around with everyone else, clean as a whistle.



This time, in addition to more baking soda (because she was still throwing up when I got home) I gave her some mineral oil to help her pass through the other end and gave her gatorade just to make sure she's getting liquid/electrolytes. Was that OK?

Everyone else is still regular - no runny poops, no coughing, no NOTHING.

 

[freemotion]

Thanks for those suggestions.

I do patrol their fence, but since no one else ever got sick I didn't pay much attention to what was growing around the edges. I also never cut back the growth because, IMO, it helped me see where the faults were and if anyone was getting in/out.

Free - have any of your animals gotten plant poisoning? I'm still curios as to what else I should do if/when anyone gets sick again or what I can add to their diet to help (besides digging up all the plants).

Some years ago, I lost a goat to what the vet thinks was eating laurel. I don't have mountain laurel, but I do have the honeysuckle laurel or azalea....I would let my (then only two) goats go into the woods before I had my pasture fence. I would take them out while I was working there. We were clearing it in the spring. One morning she was just dead, with green puke and foam coming out of her mouth. The other goat was fine and I still have her some years later. The vet said it looked like rhododendron/laurel/azalea poisoning. It is much more toxic in the spring when it is putting out new leaves...the same goat escaped into my yard the previous winter in mowed a tiny miniature rhody to the ground and was just fine.

We hired a big giant machine thingy (don't know what it was, it was HUGE) to come and strip the entire area, trees, brush, stumps, everything went. Seeded, fenced, and done. I patrol like a mad woman often and thoroughly.

Sorry, no treatment ideas, as we never saw a symptom in time. She was a rather fragile goat, giving us many scares with no clear diagnosis. She was a rescue, so who knows what she'd been through. The vet made many payments on his truck thanks to that goat.

I hope your little girl isn't testing a few leaves now and then....get back out there and scour your area, inside the fence and as far outside of it as she might reach.

I have oak, pine, poke, cherry, black walnut, and other things, but haven't had problems with them. Oh, just one greedy pygmy who has been known to eat too many acorns in a banner year, but she can be confined when the acorns really start raining down. We have pigs this year, so if I have to, I can have them clean up the acorns for me. Just because the other goats don't eat something or too much of something doesn't mean ONE might not have a taste for it.

There are oaks in New England that have much more tannins in them than some of the varieties on the west coast. I did some research after we had so many that it was hard to walk under the trees, it was like walking on wall-to-wall marbles! I learned that our red oaks have the most tannins (points on each leaf lobe), white oaks have less but still too much to safely eat in any quantity (rounded leaf lobes) and American Indians in CA could eat varieties found in that area without the long processing that ours need. So not all oaks are created equal. But acorns aren't an issue right now....but my point is, what is not a problem for one goat may be a problem for another. And what might be fine as a mature plant might be poisonous while young and growing. Just to make it trickier for us...

 

[glenolam]

Just an update - she's fine again this morning. No vomiting, no diarreah, nothing in their barn that suggests the mineral oil did it's job...

Guess now we'll have to wait and see. Good thing my husband took the day off - I put him on watch!