We lost a kid this morning... what happened?

[Crosec7]

We are first timers at this. I'm looking for some wisdom so we can hopefully avoid this in the future. I can't help feeling like there's more I should've done. On Wednesday evening we took our 3 week old Nigerian Dwarf buckling to my vet's house. She injected clove essential oil to disbud him. We know this is an experimental technique but thought the risks seemed minimal. He seemed fine that evening but the next morning he was lethargic and had rapid breathing. We thought it was pain so we gave him banamine. It seemed to help some, but yesterday evening he was bad again, with very rapid, audible breathing. I gave him another dose of banamine. He made it through the night but died early this morning while I was preparing a bottle for him (I wasn't sure mom was allowing him to nurse enough). I'm devastated as I feel that it was all my fault. Any suggestions? We won't be using the clove oil again but we did another, younger buckling too who seems totally fine. Could the stress of the trip to the vets have brought on pneumonia? Should we have started him on antibiotics the minute his breathing got bad?

 

[BlessedWithGoats]

Sorry for your loss @Crosec7 !! Try not to blame yourself.... we don't know what happened, and it won't help you to blame yourself.
Tagging some people that might have answers for you... @Southern by choice, @Goat Whisperer, @babsbag, @OneFineAcre, @Sweetened.
BWG

 

[Goat Whisperer]

I am so sorry for your loss

Can you send the kid out for a necropsy? Without seeing the kid in person I really don't know. I would contact your vet and ask if the "disbudding" could cause this. With it being that quick I would think it was whatever she injected. Maybe a reaction to it? I don't know enough about this to give a strait up answer, sorry You really need to talk to your vet about this

I have traveled with many kids and I have never dealt with this. Have you had pneumonia in your herd before? Did he ever have a temp or raspy breathing?

Again, I am so sorry Its so hard to lose a critter

 

[Hens and Roos]

so sorry to hear this

 

[HeidiO]

Could you have a necropsy done? Rapid breathing makes me think maybe he had an allergic reaction or something.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Could you have a necropsy done? Rapid breathing makes me think maybe he had an allergic reaction or something.

I am thinking the same thing.

 

[babsbag]

I am thinking allergic reaction as well but I don't know if a true reaction would take that long and it should get better with time, not worse.

My next guess would be pneumonia, and the banamine will help, I always give banamine when a kid has pneumonia. The travel probably wouldn't cause it if it was a short trip and he wasn't stressed. It was just bad timing, nothing you could have known or prevented. Don't beat yourself up, it happens. I would have started him on an antibiotic though, Duramycin or any of the Oxcytets would have been my drug of choice.

It's never easy to lose them.

 

[HeidiO]

What kind of environment has he been in? I think going from one extreme to another- like air conditioning>hot humid can contribute to them contracting pneumonia.

 

[Crosec7]

Thank you all! I've talked to my vet at length and she is also stumped. Of course, first guess us some kind of allergic reaction to the clove oil. Totally possible, but anaphylaxis would've progressed much quicker. My gut says pneumonia, but who knows. Tempting to do a necropsy but I don't really know that they'd find anything conclusive. We decided to skip it. his sister was the runt, and she had something similarjust after birth. We thought it was aspiration pneumonia, did 4 days of biomycin and she's been fine ever since. Hers never got as bad as quickly though. I think in the future I'm going to have some biomycin on hand so I can start it immediately if the lungs sound at all raspy. Other than that I don't really knowwhat else I can do. Luckily our other four kids are doing great, really thriving. I had all four sleeping in my lap last night, the best kind of therapy. Thanks for all of your thoughts.

 

[babsbag]

Be sure and let us know if the clove oil works. That would be so awesome and I would buy a boat load of the stuff. Did your vet do one injection or multiple ones around the horn bud?