Mysterious sudden death

[Ariel301]

I had a wether die yesterday mysteriously and I'm wondering if maybe someone on here has any ideas. I just want to be able to prevent it from happening again, it isn't imperative enough that I know to spend lots and lots of money for a necropsy. (I don't have lots of money either...)

Saturday night at 1:30 am, I checked all my goats. All were fine, happy, either sleeping or munching food. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Sunday morning, I go out to feed the goats. Normally, they all run to the gates of their pens to meet me. Well, the does did. The little kids did. But when I got to the pen where I keep kids being weaned, no one was to be seen. In the pen are two three month old wethers and a four month old doeling. So, I go in the pen and look in their shed to see what they are up to, thinking they may have gotten loose. I found all three laying down in a corner. The white wether and the doeling jumped up immediately, but the brown wether didn't move. Uh-oh. I checked it out, and he was dead and already stiff and cold. So he had to have died shortly after he was last checked on Saturday night, I'm thinking. The other two goats are normal, if a little stunned by the loss of their friend.

I just can't figure out what happened. He was laying down in his favorite spot, curled up like he just went to sleep and never woke. He did not seem bloated, and I think if he had bloat, he would have been acting off when I saw him a few hours before. I did not find any obvious wound or injury on him. He has never been sick since he was born.

The goats have a large pen with a shed they can go in for shelter, seven foot tall chain link fences. They have constant access to fresh water and minerals. I have two feeders in the pen, one with all they can eat of bermuda grass hay, the other with wet brewer's grains (I can get them for free by the truckload, so I feed a lot of them to my animals. Myself and several neighbors have done this for a long time with no issues ever. Plus the other goats were all eating the grains, and no one else was sick.) No one fed any of the goats any scraps or treats on Saturday.

I thought maybe a rattlesnake bite, but wouldn't there be some sign of it on him? Any other ideas? I don't think he had a urinary stone, as I saw him pee normally Saturday night.

 

[ksalvagno]

Sorry to hear about your goat. Maybe he had some sort of internal defect that there was no way of detecting. I'm not sure about rattlesnake bites since we don't have any in our area. If you went over his body closely and didn't see any type of wounds, then I wouldn't think it would be a snake bite but I certainly could be wrong.

 

[cmjust0]

This is speculation, but...

Last summer, a neighbor of mine -- a relative noobie to goats -- had goats dying off right and left. She said the thing that she saw consistently was that they'd bloat up right after they died, which she and a more experienced herdsman took to be a sign of what killed them.

Thing is, a rumenant should bloat after it dies, provided it had something in its rumen.. Afterall, just because the animal dies doesn't mean the bacteria in its rumen die too...not immediately, anyway. The bacteria continue to eat the food that was there, which produces gas, and if the animal's not alive to be able to expell it...it bloats.

So what others were taking to be an indication of the problem that killed them, I took to mean only that they were dying rather abruptly with a full belly full of roughage.

That said, the last goat we had die here did NOT bloat after death.. Reason being, she died of some kind of rather nasty bacterial gut infection that caused her first to become severely depressed and go completely off feed, and also to scour to the point that she literally had nothing left in her GI tract. Therefore, no bloat.

You indicate that the wether was 3mo and being weaned, which means he had a working rumen. The fact that he wasn't bloated, to me, would seem to indicate that his rumen was empty when he died.

Since you didn't mention any obvious scouring, I'm assuming there wasn't any.. With no scouring and what could be an empty rumen, I might be inclined to lean toward it having been something like an intestinal blockage or something to that effect which may have caused him enough discomfort to become anorexic -- but not something that would cause him to scour.

PURE SPECULATION of course...but that's where my mind goes right off the bat.


I'm really, really sorry to hear of the loss. I know that to a lot of folks, a goat's just a goat, but if you knew his favorite sleeping spot...he must have been pretty special to you.

 

[glenolam]

I'm really sorry to hear of your loss as well.

My thought is that if no one else is sick and all are acting fine, eating fine etc., this must have been a random thing occur that you couldn't possibly see from the outside.

I wish you luck and hope everyone else stays healthy!

 

[Ariel301]

cmjust, by 'not bloated', I meant not like the illness. I guess that was confusing. The body itself did begin to bloat after sitting in the sun a few hours while we dug a hole to bury him, as would be expected. Also, some sort of pinkish/yellowish/greenish watery fluid leaked from his mouth when I picked the body up by the back legs. Not sure if that's normal or a symptom. He certainly wasn't off feed when I saw him alive, he was eating like...well, a goat. No, I did not notice any scours on him or the others, or laying around the pen.

Maybe it was some sort of internal thing we could not have known about.

Our goats are all special to us, and we spend enough time with them daily to know their individual quirks, their favorite foods, where they like to lay at what times. We would have noticed quickly if anything was different. This one was destined for the dinner table in a couple of months, but it's still sad to lose him, especially since we had so many stillbirths earlier this spring.

Could it have had anything to do with the chlamydia (pinkeye) infection my does got while pregnant? This kid and his brother were the only two live births I got, the other goats all aborted. I know the doe was infected, but she managed to have live and seemingly healthy kids.

 

[tiffanyh]

Quick deaths with no previous signs can also be chalked up to heart defects. That is a possibility.

So sorry, I know that feeling of just wanting answers so you can prevent it. I woulud just keep a close eye on everyone else.

 

[michickenwrangler]

You've been having a rough year Ariel

Sorry to hear about your little one

 

[Ariel301]

Thanks everyone.

Heart defect...Now that could be a possibility. It was extremely hot the day before he died.

On the upside, I've got two does who decided to come into heat today. Looks like I might be able to get winter kids in place of the spring ones I lost!