Fellow 'old pros'...I've got a stumper....

[Roll farms]

Yeah, it's definitely not something easy or fast to cure / fix....she's got the pin cushion thing going on....Poor girl.

Luckily dh got off work the same time I went in, and was able to take the evening shots / drenching round for me.

She's about the same, which is better than worse... or dead....
by morning she might start to respond a bit more....I hope.

Kate, that's what my hub and I were wondering....is she just feeling so bad her body's doing that spasm on it's own.

Still no discharge.

I actually found her stuck in a corner of the pen outside this morning...it was POURING down rain and the buck nearly came after me while my daughter and I were carrying her out of the pen. We had to carry her about 100'. She was soaked. I'm hoping there are no upper resp. complications.

I regret to say that my husband fed that pen last night and he'll admit he's not a 'head counter' like I am....so she may have went down as early as yesterday afternoon (I saw her eating / acting normal yesterday at breakfast) and been stuck in that corner all afternoon / night until I found her at 7 am.

I feel so guilty.

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

I feel so guilty.

Don't!! I think everyone here would agree that your goats are living the good life! I hope she improves, she is in capable hands.

 

[Roll farms]

Morning update:

She pooped! And peed! Orange pee freaked me out at first, then I remembered all the B vit she's getting.

The poop was normal black berries.

She still can't stand / walk / eat / etc.

I soaked alfalfa pellets overnight w/ some mollasses and oats and made a slurry and fed her that this morning, then stuffed some fresh clover and alfalfa hay in her mouth and she'd chew / swallow it.

Gave her more baking soda and started probios today.

She looooves her gatoraide drenches. Fever's down some (103.5) and her eyes are bright.

This can take weeks to recover from, so I don't expect overnight miracles.

Thanks for the support / ideas.

 

[cmjust0]

That's very, very good news.

I'm assuming she's no longer cramping/spasming/contracting/whatevering?

What Kate said about her doe "contracting" with a neck injury...I found that interesting. Listeriosis involves 'the neck,' in a manner of speaking...brain stem anyway. And if Kate's contracted that way after a neck/possible spinal cord injury...perhaps that's something a goat does when they get a kink in their wiring, so to speak.

Or not.. I dunno.

Just glad she's trying to round the corner.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

good news on the update..and you are just right.. its always something.

goats = crazy
;-)

 

[Roll farms]

Nope, she's still doing it...the wierd cramp-thing.

And now, I'm wondering if (b/c neither of the 2 goats who had list. before did that, and as I said, she's low-goat on the totem pole in the pen she was in...and the ONLY dehorned doe...and the smallest....

Wondering if she didn't take one heck of a hit, get hurt, and the injury didn't help encourage her illness....

'Nother wierd thing...she's not blind in one eye ...the other 2 were.

Maybe it's not listeriosis at all....but the circling made me think it was...neck injury followed by pneumonia or ??? (whatever's causing the fever....) If she'd been out in this heat for a whole day....and she's BLACK....maybe she had heat stroke??

If I stand her up, she spins around my legs in circles...but that's the only 'listeriosis' symptom she has...the fever and paralysis could be from something else.

I'm just thinking in circles and driving myself nuts now.....

 

[cmjust0]

You said something earlier that struck me as a bit odd, but I didn't really put any thought into it until just this second.. You said:

Fever's down some (103.5)...

When I read that, I though...some? The little flash that went through my brain went something along the lines of: 103.5 is about +1 of normal, but +1 of normal IS kinda normal right now....that seems normal.

And then my brain shook itself off like a big wet dog and I went cruising right on along... :/

I guess I was thinking when you originally said "high fever" that you were talking like...106, 107, something like that. I've never dealt with listeriosis, but that's what I've seen reported time and again. Like, WAY HIGH fevers. But to say her fever's down "some" to 103.5 indicates that it maybe wasn't much over that to begin with...like 104.5-105, maybe?

We had one at go wonky on us w/ a temp of 104 the other day from what ended up being almost certainly the ambient temps outside.. She'd been in the barn for a while when the temp was taken, too.. She got loafy, lethargic, dull and depressed... Had her temp been 103.5, I'd have held off on everything...but at 104 (which is > +1 of normal), we thought it safer to assume an infection , so we gave her banamine and a shot of oxytet.. Before that stuff would really have had a chance to work, though, it cooled off some and she went right back to her normal self. Like, we're talking a couple hours later..

Like yours, this was a solid black disbudded (horns = radiators) nubian, and at this point, I'm 99.9% positive it was purely the heat that drove her temp up that high..

I had a doe severely injure her neck a few weeks ago...she also appeared to be having contractions and was DEFINITELY open.

Kate: You witnessed the neck injury? Like...there's no doubt that it was, indeed, a neck injury (and not heat stroke or listeriosis or whatever..)?

Keep in mind I'm not questioning...I'm just confirming.


OK, so...off to see if I can figure out what the hell "heat stroke" actually is. Like, what is it that happens to the body when one has a "heat stroke," and is/are there any medication(s) that might be of use.

 

[jodief100]

I do not know about Heat Stroke in goats but in people, heat stroke is when the body's cooling mechanism shuts down. You stop sweating and body temperature skyrockets because it can no longer cool itself. Treatment is douse in cold water, keep dousing in cold water and hope you can get the body temperature down before brain damage sets in. By cooling the body down manually, it will reset the bodys cooling mechanism.

I have recorded the body temperature of people in heat stroke at 106-108 degrees. If it was heat stroke I would expect to see very high body temperatures.

It might have been heat exhaustion. That is where the bodys cooling mechanism still works but cannot keep up with the rise in body temperature. The body temperature will be elevated but not dangerously so. Treatment is the same as for heat stroke but the condition is not a serious. Heat Stroke is always preceded by heat exhaustion.

Again, my experience is in Humans but I would suspect the same would apply to all large mammals.

 

[Ariel301]

The spinning you mention...I had a bloated doe do that last year. I went out to check on them one afternoon, and she got up out of her shady spot, and immediately did a few circles then flipped over and started rolling across the pen. She could not stand up without help, and when she did, she did not seem to know up from down, and would turn in circles when she did manage to stay on her feet, or stagger a few drunken looking steps and start rolling again. Is that anything like your doe?

The only thing we could figure out with Ebony was that she was just crazy from pain, maybe, (she is a drama queen even on the best of days) or the whole thing was caused by eating something poisonous, which added in the neuro symptoms on top of the bloat, because bloat doesn't cause neurological symptoms that I have ever heard of. Is it possible that your doe ate a poisonous plant that was hidden in the hay? You said if there was something yucky left over that the others did not touch, she probably would have eaten it since she's the lowest one in the group...

 

[cmjust0]

KIM!

Clinical signs of goat polio are associated
with cerebral edema, cerebellar, and herniation
of the brain, and the death of brain cells con-
trolling motor and visual functions. Convulsions
occur in 2 to 5-minute intervals.

Goats may be standing or lying down when
having convulsions. Goats appear dull and
depressed and unable to coordinate muscular
movements. They may also show signs of
increased aggression, muscle tremors, and
temporary blindness that can last 2 to 3 weeks.
Body temperature, pulse, and respiration rates
can be increased. Rumen motility is maintained
normally. Other signs of PEM include opisthoto-
nos, a condition of abnormal posturing where
the head is thrown backward accompanied by
rigidity, severe arching of the back, muscular
contractions, and teeth grinding. As the condi-
tion progresses, the animal becomes recumbent
with frequent convulsions, nystagmus (rapid
involuntary movement of the eyeballs), blind-
ness, and unaltered palpebral and pupillary
responses.

http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/U/UNP-0065/UNP-0065.pdf

I ran across mention of the word convulsion after I started thinking...what if these are seizures? When I saw "convulsion," I kinda thought it made more sense.. A google on "goat convulsion" -- just trying to learn what a goat might do if it had a convulsion -- led me straight to goat polio and what appears to be a VERY SIMILAR description as the one you laid out..

If she was mine, I'd have her on BIG WHOPPING ASS DOSES of b-complex and I'd start a round of dexamethasone, as well.. Even if it is heatstroke, injury, or even listeriosis, dex is something that's sometimes used in all of them, so I wouldn't suspect it to be one of those things that ends up being the exact wrong thing to do..

EDIT -- I take that back...I'd probably get straight thiamine from the vet.

The only worry would be that dex is an immune system killer...which is why I've always ridden the fence on using it to treat listeriosis, though. On the other hand, some folks use dex for listeriosis as a general practice, sooo... Gotta be your own judge, of course.

I looked for reference to convulsions in regard to listeriosis, but all I could find were docs which attempted to help differentiate the two...and convulsions were mentioned only with polio.

Something I just saw that I didn't know is that -- like listeriosis -- goat polio can apparently also be the result of eating moldy hay?!? I didn't know that..

Given how goat polio and listeriosis are nearly indistinguishable anyhow...and how you immediately thought it was listeriosis...and how polio leads to convulsions and arching and so forth...really is sounding more like polio to me now.