Another doe with scours...already lost one.

[cmjust0]

Yeah...who knew that primarily just waiting and watching and worrying was such hard work?!? We're exhausted!

As for the feed.. I buy from a local mill called Hallway Feeds. They're the official feed supplier of the NTRA, and their feeds are sold in like 13 countries around the world.

Their goat-labelled feed is a 16% medicated pellet, mixed 2:1 Ca, with added ammonium chloride, copper, etc... At the very least, it's certainly no worse than anything else out there.. Our goats, thus far, have done very well on Hallway Feed.

Thing is, it's $7.50/bag if you pick it up at the dock. That's pretty cheap...cheap enough that a HUGE number of goat people around here feed it. If there were a problem even with just the bagged goat feed and no other feeds they produce, I think I'd be hearing more about goats going down the way mine did.

If it were a problem with all their feeds (as I would expect something like salmonella contamination to be), I can't help but think people around the world would be screaming and yelling -- especially if a million dollar thoroughbred dies.

All my goats have been on the same feed, too, right out of the same bag. If everyone went down at the same time, I'd be a lot more suspect of the feed.. As it stands, though, I don't think that's what it is.

But, hey...still don't know what it is, so I can't really say what it's not either.

 

[cmjust0]

Spectinomycin (the product that helps in Scour Halt) is a great antibiotic, however, it is no longer available as an over the counter/rx injectable, and in order for it to truly be effective with Scour Halt you would need enough Scour Halt to impact the goat. Two pumps of Scour Halt only delivers 50mg of spectinomycin-the dose recommended for pigs over 10lbs. The reason it works so well in babies, is the quantity of the medication to body weight.

Entero can be treated with Mylanta/antibiotic if that is all you have, but Mylanta can cause a loosening of the stool. Neither treatment has been as effective as CD Antitoxin for me.

The ones that went down bad and recovered got a total of 300mg in 2 doses, 3ml at a time.. The one last night that may or may not have been headed downhill got 150mg and is out grazing merrily as we speak.. She could be a fluke, or she could have been caught SUPER early....dunno.

I do know that the guy who recommended Scour-Halt to me advised that I be really careful with it, as he'd gotten a little too trigger happy with it at some point and locked one up solid. I'm not sure if it recovered or not, but I'm guessing not...otherwise, he'd probably have never known what he did.

Thing is...I'm not sure what else is even in Scour-Halt.. All the label says is Spectinomycin..

 

[trestlecreek]

May not be the feed,...I know in the past microtoxins(sp) have been to blame for sporadic problems...
What is it medicated with? Is it decoxx?

 

[cmjust0]

Yep, deccox.

Thing is, we really don't even feed that much of it.. A 50lb bag will last this group...jeez...a week or better when there were 9 (...now 8 ).

They basically get a little bit just to get them out of the way while we refresh their water, fill the hayrack, feed the LGD, etc.. Grain has sorta become more of a tool around here at this point.

 

[trestlecreek]

Ok, Decoxx is really safe, that is what is in my feed.
The monensin is what I do not like as an antibiotic additive....

 

[kimmyh]

Yep, deccox.

Thing is, we really don't even feed that much of it.. A 50lb bag will last this group...jeez...a week or better when there were 9 (...now 8 ).

They basically get a little bit just to get them out of the way while we refresh their water, fill the hayrack, feed the LGD, etc.. Grain has sorta become more of a tool around here at this point.

Okay, that may be your problem, it is better to not feed grain at all, than to feed it here and there. Feeding it as a tool today, and not tomorrow is a great way to bring on Entero.

 

[cmjust0]

Okay, that may be your problem, it is better to not feed grain at all, than to feed it here and there. Feeding it as a tool today, and not tomorrow is a great way to bring on Entero.

I think I misrepresented the situation.. Every evening, we head to the barn to refresh their water, fill the hayrack, and feed the LGD, and that's when the goats get their grain. That way they get grain every evening, the same amount each time, and almost at a set schedule. Where the "tool" part comes in is that we only feed enough grain keep them occupied long enough to shut the LGD out of the barn and get him fed, throw hay into the rack and fluff it up a bit (..yeah, I know, but they like it fluffy ..), dump and refill their water, etc...

They clean up their grain in a matter of just a few minutes, and there's not enough there for anybody to go about gorging themselves on it.. They try to kill one another to get at it, of course, but there are five pans in total for 8 goats now. If someone gets bumped out of one pan, they simply go find another one where there's less "traffic."

When they're done, the pans are collected right away and checked to be sure nobody stepped in them or anything like that, and then they're stored upside down (to prevent bird poopage) in the hayloft. If there's a speck of anything questionable in them, they come back to the house and get bleached before they're used again.

All in all, the only real inconsistencies in our goats' diet is what they're finding to eat on their own.. Even then, if you take sort of a macro view and look at their pastures as a singular food source, the various "ingredients" of which they've adjusted themselves to tolerate in the same manner they've become acclimated to the individual ingredients of their grain, there's extremely little variation in their diet.

That's not to say that a pasture is like pelleted feed, of course.... If one of the goats decides to walk around picking at bull nettle all day long, you're probably going to see the negative results of that....but that's very unlike a goat. It's even more unlike four goats.

Anyway...I'm rambling now..

I get what you're saying, though, and I totally agree. That's why we try to be really consistent with our goats' diet, so as not to create unnecessary pauses in the digestive process and create little windows of opportunity for things that go bump in the rumen.

 

[trestlecreek]

I think too little decoxx in the ration could cause resistance to cocci, but that is about the biggest drawback...

 

[cmjust0]

Deccox, to me, is a double edged sword.. It does a good job preventing coccidiosis, but it mimics thiamine.. As we all know, B vitamins -- thiamine in particular -- are critical to a goat's wellbeing.. I can't help but think that if deccox wasn't labelled for goats and we were debating whether or not it was safe to use off-label, there would be huge debates about it.

I can tell you that when I mentioned to my vet that our goats were getting very little grain with deccox, he said "It doesn't take much" just before he basically ruled out coccidiosis.

I dunno how much is "not much" as far as this vet would consider, but ours don't get much.

ETA: If I had my druthers, I'd buy unmedicated grain and do a preventative for coccidia in kids if only so I'd know exactly who got what, when, and in what dosage. The feed mill doesn't make an unmedicated version, though, and I've not yet come to the decision to switch brands just to get away from the med..

I might, though, eventually.

 

[kimmyh]

Ah, I get it. Is it possible for you to dry lot the goats for a couple of weeks? If you can, then maybe you can slowly let a couple of them out at a time and watch to see if any have trouble with their browse.

In order for Decoxx to be effective in reducing your soil loads/containment, but not eradication in your goats, you have to feed the full amount specified on the bag, which with many feeds is quite a bit.