Scours, again?!

[First Time Goat.Mum]

Dilbert and Cooper, my two wethers, have had their fair share of issues with lice, eye infections and scours. I thought they were on the road to recovery with a new diet and some medications (ProBios and Pedialyte) but out of no where yesterday Cooper got a bad case of the scours. I am thinking it could be the diet change (they were on heavy whipping cream and whole milk but now they are on whole milk, evaporated milk and buttermilk) but I cant be sure since Dilbert seems to be doing much better on the new diet. They both had fecals, blood and a physical exam done by a vet who specializes in sheep and goats. That revealed nothing. This morning I went to feed them and there was diarrhea down Coopers legs and his eyes had a yellow crust on the corners and they looked watery. He seemed out of it but drank his bottle. I gave the vet a call to let her know what happened and hopefully she will have some advice. I dont really know how to proceed since the fecals and blood are clean. Could it really just be their diet? Is there an underlying problem I could be ignoring? Some notable points are...
-They both are a month old Monday
-Both weigh 7 pounds
-They get half a cup of grain and orchard grass daily
-And the climate here in WA is very wet and it has snowed the past few days
If I am leaving out any important details let me know and I will respond ASAP.

 

[Southern by choice]

Just give them whole milk... no evaporated milk, no whipping cream, no buttermilk... it isn't necessary and is IMO way to rich for their system.
We have raised a lot of goats, bottle fed a lot of goats... there is no need for all that added in.
Currently our Nigerian kids are on 4x day feeding getting a quart among the 5 of them at EACH FEEDING. So 32/5 = 6.4 oz (they are on a lambar now) That is roughly 24 oz per kid. They all have great weights.
The 5 kids range in age of
2@10 days birth weights were 4 lbs 3oz and 3lbs
2@5 days birth weights were 4lbs 2 oz and 3lbs 1oz
1@4 days 3lbs 14 oz

We will weigh them tomorrow.

Use the whole milk and at their age feed 3x a day. They need to gain weight but you don't want to overfeed.
The switching the rich milk the giving too much before they were ready (from your other post) and the scours... this is really tough on their system.

Do you know if their dam had any selenium while pregnant or if kids got any? That can affect their gut if deficient.

My suspicion says - just do the milk give the hay and a tiny bit of feed and see if that straightens it out.

 

[Beekissed]

I wouldn't do away with the buttermilk just yet. The cream and all maybe and also the feed, but the buttermilk can help reculture their bowels and I've used it successfully to eliminate scours in young calves.

 

[Jeanne Sheridan]

Our vet and the man who has been our mentor for years has us using a mix similar to what you switched to. We have had our bottle babies on it for two breeding seasons when we didn't have enough milk from our does to cover all the babies. We do a mix of whole milk, whole butter milk and evaporated milk. I had two doelings last year that that was all they got after Colostrum milk that we got from their breeder, from their mom. We didn't breed our does this year as we have some fencing and structure issues to address but will be picking up more babies from the same breeder as last year. They are all papered Nubians and we are looking to pick up more polled goats.

 

[GLENMAR]

I also recommend only whole milk. Make sure its warmed to 100 degrees.
Use kayopectate for the scours.

 

[omg_sob]

One of my little guys has an on again, off again bout of scours. Now it's ON again. I have kaopectate, but he's not taking it, should i use a syringe and squirt it?

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Yes,

 

[Tony Freudenberg]

Hi. I need help w my 5 wk old Nigerians. Finally got them going good on bottles. Breeder said 75% goat milk, 25% cow milk. Over a wks time, 50/50 on the milk mix. We noticed that 1 had droppings more like dog poop. Little logs instead of pellets. But now, their poop is very soft & messy. They have been having free choice alfalfa & Bermuda grass. They nibble on that w 2 bottle feedings a day. They drink water from a bowl. What should we do about the soft poop

 

[Mike CHS]

Hi. I need help w my 5 wk old Nigerians. Finally got them going good on bottles. Breeder said 75% goat milk, 25% cow milk. Over a wks time, 50/50 on the milk mix. We noticed that 1 had droppings more like dog poop. Little logs instead of pellets. But now, their poop is very soft & messy. They have been having free choice alfalfa & Bermuda grass. They nibble on that w 2 bottle feedings a day. They drink water from a bowl. What should we do about the soft poop

I don't have goats but with my sheep the first thing I check for is coccidia when that happens.