OK, I am just going to have to admit it, Spring and Summer are just too busy for me to have the time to blog. I know that I blogged last Summer but this year has been crazy. I have too many irons in the fire.
After the worming, all of my goats have picked up weight and are looking good. I will be worming them all again tomorrow at 10 days after the first worming. I will not be tripling the dosage this time, just slightly over the regular horse dosage.
I had quite a time with my two little spotted Nubian bucklings, they were just weaned when I traded for them. Weaning should be a gradual thing. Kids shouldn't just be pulled off of the doe. They should be separated in gradually increasing time periods.
If they are just all of the sudden taken away from their mothers they don't get enough fluids to sustain them well, because they haven't learned to drink an adequate amount of water. So these two bucklings got diarrhea and started loosing weight, they got lethargic and didn't want to eat or drink.
I started drenching them with Nutri-Drench (For Beef Cattle because it is cheaper), Pepto-Bismol and Pedialyte. The drenching wasn't going too well because they fought me like wild cats. So I decided to teach them to take a bottle. This is very hard, if an animal has never seen a bottle before.
One of them finally decided that the Pedialyte was pretty good stuff so he started sucking it down. The other one would only chew on the nipple and wouldn't suck. It took him forever to empty the bottle by chewing. It has been so hot here and sitting out there for 30 minutes in the sun while he chewed, got old for both of us. Then yesterday after about 5 days of this, he started sucking and downed his bottle in no time.
I switched from the Pepto-Bismol to Slippery Elm Bark Powder after the first bottle of Pepto was gone in the first day and a half, they were getting a bottle every 3 - 4 hours. Their diarrhea was completely gone after the second day of the Slippery Elm Bark mixed with goat's milk, Pedialyte and a squirt of Nutri-Drench. I am down to just one bottle per day now that they are over the diarrhea. It is so hot that I think they still need the extra boost.
1 comment:
That nutri drench is some good stuff! I know how it feels to tube them, no fun, a 50 - 60 pound calf is hard to hold on too! Luckily this year I've not had to tube any calves, they took the bottle right away, which isnt normal! Good luck with the goaties!
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