Sick baby goat

[Feathered_Texans]

I am pretty new to raising goats and I recently ended up with 3 baby goats on Wednesday. They were all doing good until yesterday I noticed the male was not really using his back right leg. I thought he might just need some time and it would heal. It got worse and to day he doesn’t really use either back leg. After favoring the right one his back left hock got a little swollen.
so I did some research and I thought it was weakness in his back legs like other baby goats have been known to get. I saw that selenium can help speed the process of them going back to normal so I gave him some today about 4:00 pm.I was hoping that would work but I don’t know how long it takes to kick in. Every time I feed him I help him stand to use the bathroom and eat and the last time he did I noticed a little drop of blood in his bowel movement and he was straining a little bit. He gets tired easier as well and his breathing occasionally rattles.
I have been feeding the kid milk replacer by the manna pro. Do I need to be feeding something else?
The other 2 kids are still acting normal and playing around fine.
I know I am probably doing lots of things wrong but I am trying to learn quickly. If anybody can help it would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Feathered_Texans]

Please excuse how dirty he is but in this photo you may be able to see some of the blood and his swollen left hock

 

[Mvan42]

@cassie if anyone would know she would....

 

[cassie]

First of all, dump the replacer and feed plain old cow milk from the store. Some kids do fine on replacer and others just can't tolerate the stuff. If you want to get fancy, here is a formula made especially for Boer kids and mini goats. Take a gallon jug of plain old whole cow milk. Pour off about a quart. To the jug add a can of evaporated (not sweetened condensed) milk and a cup of buttermilk. Shake it up and then add enough of the milk you poured off to fill the jug. That's it.

As for the sore joint, your kid has navel ill. It is caused by bacteria entering through the navel cord shortly after birth and it shows up later as swollen, inflamed, and sore joints. He needs antibiotics ASAP. Navel ill can kill.

 

[Feathered_Texans]

First of all, dump the replacer and feed plain old cow milk from the store. Some kids do fine on replacer and others just can't tolerate the stuff. If you want to get fancy, here is a formula made especially for Boer kids and mini goats. Take a gallon jug of plain old whole cow milk. Pour off about a quart. To the jug add a can of evaporated (not sweetened condensed) milk and a cup of buttermilk. Shake it up and then add enough of the milk you poured off to fill the jug. That's it.

As for the sore joint, your kid has navel ill. It is caused by bacteria entering through the navel cord shortly after birth and it shows up later as swollen, inflamed, and sore joints. He needs antibiotics ASAP. Navel ill can kill.

I just began switching to whole milk today. We also contacted the people that we got them from and they had never seen these issues before. They talked with their vet and he said they have floppy kid syndrome and a list of treatments. One of their kids started to get a slight limp as well.
We began the treatments they said but it might be too late for him. One of my others started to show signs as well but hopefully we caught it and he has the correct diagnosis.

 

[Feathered_Texans]

First of all, dump the replacer and feed plain old cow milk from the store. Some kids do fine on replacer and others just can't tolerate the stuff. If you want to get fancy, here is a formula made especially for Boer kids and mini goats. Take a gallon jug of plain old whole cow milk. Pour off about a quart. To the jug add a can of evaporated (not sweetened condensed) milk and a cup of buttermilk. Shake it up and then add enough of the milk you poured off to fill the jug. That's it.

As for the sore joint, your kid has navel ill. It is caused by bacteria entering through the navel cord shortly after birth and it shows up later as swollen, inflamed, and sore joints. He needs antibiotics ASAP. Navel ill can kill.

Is there anyway the swollen joint could of been from the way he walked and not naval ill? When he wasn’t using the right leg his left leg was positioned weird when he walked.

 

[cassie]

Probably not. Most likely the leg was positioned oddly because it hurt. I have seen this before. It certainly isn't a rare condition. In navel ill the joint is hard, swollen, maybe hot, and definitely painful. It may first show up in the knee joint, the hock joint, or that joint on the rear leg above the hock (stifle?). Sometimes several joints may be affected at once. Usually the kid has a fever. I have seen navel ill in lambs, foals, and calves as well as kids. The good news, at least in my experience, is that a course of antibiotics clears it up promptly. However it may take a while before the affected joint returns to its normal size. If you look up navel ill, according to the literature the navel is often soft and or swollen, moist, and showing signs of infection. Personally, I have never found this to be the case.