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I think I've argued this one before, with Cassie, so I won't argue it again other that to say IMHO with holding water at ANY time, other than choke, is a terrible idea.
I've dealt with entero only a couple of times, knock on wood...and never withheld water...and have turned it around each time with prudent care. I cannot imagine withholding water would do any more than dehydrate an already stressed goat.
I NEVER said anything about withholding water from a goat with entero. I said to withold water to prevent lactic acidosis from an excess of grain. Entero, grain overload, and bloat are three separate entities requiring separate treatments that can occur individually or in any combination. Meaning a goat can have overload, entero and bloat all at the same time. Or it can have bloat by itself. Or it can have bloat and entero and no overload.
Withholding the water for a few hours for a goat that has just been caught with its head buried in the grain bin is preventing stress, not giving it. In fact at this point the animal is not stressed at all. It is still satisfied with itself for managing to get into all those goodies in spite of your best efforts to keep it out. The stress sets in a few hours later after the acid builds up and makes the animal sick. The chemical reaction that produces the lactic acid cannot occur without the presence of water. If after gorging on grain the goat tanks up on water it allows lactic acid to be produced and an excess of lactic acid causes stress big time. Death too. The simple treatment of witholding water and filling the animal up on dry hay will prevent that deadly cycle.
On the occasions I have found the goats in the grain and before they could get to the water and penned them up with lots of hay and no water for about six hours, the next day they were fine and none the worse for wear. I also gave them an entero shot. If I didn't find the culprits until after they had tanked up on water it was a whole different ball game. In this case I did not withhold water. There would be no point. The damage was done and the production of an excess of lactic acid was underway. Treatment with antiacids, activated charcoal plus preventative treatment for entero was necessary to save their wretched little lives. Sometimes IV fluids and maybe even an IV sodium bicarbonate drip administered by the vet was indicated.
BTW, I got the protocols for the treatment of grain overload from an article by some veterinarians whose specialty was ruminent medicine at the University of California Veterinary School at Davis California. It did not come from page 32 of the Cassie Book of Logic.
As for entero, for better or worse I have had a lot of experience with it. It is very common here probably having to do with soil pH. Treatment for entero is a dose of clostridium perfingens antitoxin. Some penicillin is helpful and so is thiamine. Thiamine is produced in the goat's rumen, and rumen upsets can cause a thiamine deficiency. Thiamine deficiency causes some truly bizzarre symptoms in rumenants including apparent blindness, paralyses, pushing against the wall with the head, to name a few. A lot of vets simply do not recognize entero and do not treat it properly when they do. Even my expensive book Goat Medicine did not have a protocol for dealing with entero at all. I do not know if that was corrected in later editions or not.
Just for the record, I have bred and owned dairy goats since 1965. For many years I had a commercial dairy and milked over a hundred head. I mention this only to make it clear that I did not just fall off the turnip truck.
