Newborn Goat pneumonia treatment. URGENT

[CochinLover1]

What is the best medication to treat newborn goats (Boer) for Pneumonia. I have Duramycin 72-200 and LA-200. Which is better and is there another medication that is even better than those.

 

[cassie]

This is something you really need to discuss with the vet. The drug of choice for pneumonia depends on what organism is causing it and what it is resistant to. That varies from one area to the other. When I lived in the San Joaquin Valley in California, we would occasionally get a fast moving pneumonia in the summer and the only thing that was effective was penicillin. The newer fancier drugs wouldn't touch it. Penicillin was not effective in the pneumonias we got in the winter. How are the kids? Do they have a fever? Do they seem depressed? Are they eating? Are they breathing fast? If you want you can go ahead and give the LA200. Give it under the skin and not into the muscle though.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I have always used penicillin, dosed for the cow dose, given until symptoms disappear plus two days.

 

[CochinLover1]

It was not pneumonia after all. Took their temperatures, both normal. It was a selenium deficiency. They are both inside, next to our wood stove, being bottle fed from the milk from their mother (who wants nothing to do with them.)

They were also chilled, now that they are warm, they are more interested in nursing. Now we have another problem. The kids are used to their mother's milk. They have had their colostrum and now the mom is not producing enough for the ravenous kids! They are used to their mother's milk and we are going to be supplementing with cow's milk. Any thoughts on this? We will be mixing the goat and cow's milk. It is a very rich, whole, unpasteurized cow's milk.

 

[CochinLover1]

I know a lot about poultry, like the back of my hand. I'm still pretty new to goats though. (And there is a BIG difference between them!! ...which isn't surprising. We're talking mammals vs birds.. but still)

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I would recommend milk replacer, but people on here like to say terrible things about it without having any actual experience. If you can follow directions you can feed milk replacer, make sure it's for goats which is made out of goat's milk. I have no experience feeding cows milk to a goat. I like to feed something actually made for goats.

So I'm assuming you are not interested in milking the mom. Do what is best for you. Glad you figured out what was the trouble, you must be in a selenium deficient area.

 

[cassie]

I have raised literally hundreds of kids on cow's milk. Raised quite a few on replacer too when I had a lot of kids and was, for whatever reason, short of milk. When I got some Jerseys my kids got cow milk and the calves got goat milk. Both the calves and the kids did great. Feeding the cow milk to the kids saved me the work of pasteurizing the goat milk in order to prevent the transmission of CAE to the kids from the raw goat milk. Calves don't get CAE. The only time I ever ran into trouble was sometimes the milk from my Jerseys was a little too rich for the kids so I occasionally I had to dilute it a bit. Since Boers tend to produce a richer milk than most dairy goats I wouldn't think that would be a problem in any event As for the comment that people who are opposed to using replacer feel that way because they have had no experience using it, is simply not true. Many people, including me and a lot of people on this list, who don't like raising kids on replacer feel the way they do because they HAVE had a lot of experience using it. Some kids do fine on replacer and some don't. The only reason to use replacer at all is for economic reasons. Replacer is usually cheaper than milk, but with the premium replacers made especially for kids that isn't true either. When you are raising just a few kids, the cost difference is not really an issue. In any event, mixing the cow milk half and half with goat milk will prevent digestive upsets, if any.

 

[GillenHallGoats]

@Cassie, are you talking about regular, homogenized milk like I would buy for my family to drink? I always thought pasteurized/homogenized milk was bad for animals. I want to get this right.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We dislike milk replacer be it "nurseall" or a goat specific one but we keep a bag in the freezer just in case, we also keep a bag of colostrum powder just in case. However we save and freeze all the goat colostrum(liquid) we can get in case we need it. We have had kids born where mom just has no colostrum/milk or it takes hours for the colorstrum to show up or they only make a very very small amount of colostrum. Right now we are bottling two kids and a lamb with a broken leg on goats milk, cow milk and replacer. None of them like the replacer and have to get pretty hungry to eat any large amount of it. They love the goat milk of course and they love cow milk just as well.

Over feeding can be a problem, we take the bottle away when they start kind of gasp breathing as they are nursing. We check their bellies if they seem like they have a reasonable milk belly we move to the next kid if they need more milk as wait a minute or two and go back to nursing them. I know lambs in particular are prob to nursing themselves to death on milk when bottle fed we have seen them die from it.

Last year we also had a few goat kids with sloshy belly who died.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

You should always feed a specific measured amount to goat kids no matter if milk or milk replacer and all increases should be done in ounces and over days, random amounts fed and feeding until the kid says enough is a sure way to kill them. Leave them always a bit hungry and stuff a bit of hay in their mouths. I also follow their bottles with a bit of water to get them used to the taste as well.