Diarrhea in Goat Kids

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.

Back Up We Go

It has been a long old day, pretty as it was, I didn't get to enjoy it much. I forced fluids into Miracle every 15 minutes, mostly pedialyte, then later this evening I started giving her milk again. I gave her Pepto-Bismol every hour until all signs of diarrhea were gone.

I just gave Miracle her 1:00 AM feeding and she took two bottles or about 18 oz. I see no sign of fresh diarrhea. If her appetite continues to improve she will eat us out of house and home. She has been so weak today that we haven't been able to put her in with her Mother.

And Down We Go

I want to get off of this roller coaster, I never did like them. Miracle has developed diarrhea and I just can't seem to get ahead of it. She was doing great this morning and really downing the milk, then the diarrhea started. I acted quickly with two tubes of CRS Gold Foal Paste and Pepto-Bismol, but she dehydrated very rapidly, became weak and won't eat. I am forcing fluids down her now every 15 minutes. I have been giving her nutri-drench and pedialyte, but am just not seeing any results other than the diarrhea has just about stopped.