Goats got into the turkey feed!

[moenmitz]

I know I read somewhere that chicken feed is toxic to goats- tonight while we were out to dinner, our four goats found a way out of their pen, into the broiler pen, and ripped open two brand new sacks of feed- one is organic turkey starter, the other was an organic base mix-you mix it with grain, so it is basically minerals, vitamins...something that is NOT to be consumed in large quantities. (Neither is medicated of course) Thinking that is probably the most dangerous of the two. So much was spilled, and since there are four goats, it is really difficult to say how much they ate. What do I need to watch for? Is there anything I can do for them as a preventative? Ready to shoot them for the damage they did, but I sure don't want them to DIE first.....

Kidding by the way...I love my goats, just has been an unpleasant end to an already bad evening. I left dinner early with a stomach bug, and hubby interrupted my retching with the report on the state of things in the barn. Going to go throw up now, I will check in later to see if there is any suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[Peaches]

poultry type feed is bad for goats. first of all, watch for goats to have the runs - that will be an indicatino of how it is affecting them. Second - give them pepto bismal w/ a large syringe - I keep it around because MY goats got into the poultry food and I asked the vet what to keep around just in case. At that time, the vet DID come by and tubed the stomach of my smaller goat.

Here is what he told me:

Pepto Bismal 60 ccs every four hours and baking soda in COLD water 2 tsp in an ounce of water syringed in to the goat.

Hope this will help... we wound up buying a completely sep shed for food and in the clipped shed I put all food in garb cans AND bungee those!

 

[moenmitz]

Thank you for the response. Well, this was a few days ago, you were the first to respond, so I googled info instead as it was late at night. I read to give them vegetable oil and baking soda dissolved in water, so I managed to force it down one of them. (I also read about using Pepto or Milk of Magnesia, but we had neither, and all teh stores here close at 11 pm) Not having a syringe, I used a sports bottle. Lots of fun. Mind you, this was by myself, at 1 A.M., in between bouts of nausea. These are almost 2 year old Boers, so big girls. Doing that 1 did me in. I sat down on the ground and looked at the other three, whose rumen did not appear abnormally distended, and did not seem in any distress. I decided I might die before they did. Dumped their water bucket out (so the grain would not ferment) poured my oil AND baking soda concoction into the water pail and went to bed. I figured if they were thirsty, they would drink THAT. They are all still alive and doing just peachy, so I am thinking they must not have eaten too much of it. I am definitely going to be stocking a goat and chicken infirmary for the future though- this is not the sort of thing one should have to come up with in the middle of the night!

 

[Their Other Mother]

One of my goats got into a brand new bag of layer crumbles last week. On the same night we also had a guest over who wanted to help out at feeding time (without our knowledge) and threw way too much horse pellets in her feeder, like a gallon... Poor thing looked awful when I found her in the morning. We seperated her from the other goat - Leighla, who seemed fine, I guess she knew when to stop eating. Pearl layed around for about 2 days but finnaly perked up and is doing fine.