Questions, dead baby :o(

[Cheribelle]

Not my first goat, but newbie mistakes....
I bought a lively little LaMancha bottle doeling at a Sunday swap. Here's question #1.... Why not milk replacer? I fed her an all-stock milk formula from Calf Manna, from a fresh bag.
This little darlin was very lively and always took her bottle right down. Same as usual Wednesday night, Thursday morning dead and stiff legged. I can't believe the milk replacer was the problem, because (dumb mistake) I had her in a stall with a young pigmy nanny for company. ( I Know, dumb to not quarantine....)
2days later the pigmy was also dead.

Any ideas? I for sure won't use that stall until a thourough cleaning and disinfecting. What do you think I should vaccinate for? The pigmy did have some of the milk, but only once when she shared it from a bowl, when the baby didn't act hungry. I figured the baby had been eating hay. She felt full. I think this was on Monday. The pigmy belonged to someone else, and I doubt if it had any vaccinations....

Newbies reading, make note- Quarantine, buy from a known source.

Any of you veterans have an idea what took these goats so quickly?

[Chaty]

Milk replacer wont curdle in the stomach and they basically starve to death from it sometimes. Also it causes the scours. They feel full from it but just dont do what regular milk will do for them. Also a All-stock replacer is too high in protien for their little tummies to take. If you do find yourself using replacer it needs to be diluted down and either whole milk or 1/2 & 1/2 or buttermilk added to it. Sounds like you might have something else going on if the older goat died also. Not sure what it could be.

[kreddish]

Gosh..... I hope you find the answere... very sad to hear about the loss.. My baby doe Daisy is about 7-8 weeks now and still milking from mom. She is starting to nibble/teast on everyting and drinking water... and goes to the salt/mineral lick... but still such a baby. Don't really have advise... but so sorry for you.

[Cannon_Farms]

Milk replacer killed my Pixie within four hours of her having the first bottle of it, i tried switching because I was feeding so many babies, never again.

[sammyd]

its my thought that this was a sick goat that you bought to have also killed you nanny...
you need to be looking for thing that are transferable from goat to goat I would spray that pen down with a 10% bleach soultion and leave that pen to use last...
we have had a strange heard health year...with unexplained deaths in our cattle. mostly I suspect is scours.... Its a heart puller also to spend 100$ or more on something that appears happy healthy kicking and dead 3 days later, I take a risk at every auction/swap meet I go to..

[Ernie]

Yeah, I'd have blamed the milk replacer except that it took down the other goat too.

I've got an 800 page book on goat diseases and it's the most useless thing I have on my shelf. Almost every disease is only detectable by autopsy and almost every disease takes down the goat fast. Goats are such naturally hardy critters that anything bad enough to make them sick will also usually kill them.

It may not be disease though. Something that virulent would have probably killed that little one back in the original herd it came from. It would probably also have taken down most the other goats at the auction. You bought her Sunday and she lived until Wednesday, so that's at least a three day incubation period, assuming she contracted the disease at the swap meet (latest possible time). The pygmy died 2 days AFTER the little one, so that's a five day incubation period for that one. That's unusual for a disease.

If you haven't already buried them, I suggest you perform an autopsy yourself. Look to see if the stomach is intact and not perforated by a foreign object. Did you feed them hay in their common stall? Was it held together with twine or wire? Anything out of the ordinary about that hay? Or the water they were drinking from? Look for environmental factors as well as potential disease agents.

I'd follow Sammy's advice and bleach that stall, clean out everything right down to the bare dirt, and then let it sit without anything on the surface for as long as you possibly can.

[thequeensblessing]

I'm so sorry to hear about your goats. It's a sad thing, no matter what the animal is.
We've had a rough year this year with bottle calves, or shortly after weaning. We had no problem with scours at all, but all the cold rainy weather we had left them open to pneumonia. We lost 9 this year. It's sad, and it's a hit in the pocketbook, but it's also lessons learned.
I hope you get it figured out soon.

[Janis Sauncy]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Had she had a CD&T shot yet? Enterotoxemia can take them really fast.

You know, for all the horror stories I've read here about milk replacer, I have to say I raised many, many babies successfully on it.

Janis

[UUmom2many]

I really dont' have any advice but is there anyway you could check with the seller to see if any other goats were effected? I'm not sure how willing they'd be to tell you a bunch of their babies died but if you can figure out if others were affected then maybe it will help you to determine COD.

[chamoisee]

Were there any other symptoms at all? How old was the Pygmy?

[DairyGoatSlave]

heres a question...what postion were they in when they died? neck back or anything?

[Cheribelle]

Hmm.
They were laying flat on their side, like they had gone to sleep. The necks were in a normal line.
The swap is a monthly one, so next week I think is the next one. You can bet I'll be asking some questions!
The pigmy was maybe 8 months old. She had a bad start in life I'm afraid, the woman was feeding her mostly bread. She went south for the winter and I brought her goat here. It was TINY.
I thought I'd take better care of it than a part- time bread thrower (
The hay was what I had been feeding all along. I had a milk goat in the stall with the pigmy until about 2 weeks before this, same hay. They also got some sweet feed.
So I am thinking I picked up something at the swap, and the pigmy was maybe week and got it, too?
But what was "it" I wonder?

[DQ]

that would be dead pretty fast for a viral infection and it seem pretty unlikely that a bacterial infection that was so awful could be transmitted so easily to otherswise healthy adults and not have killed a bunch of goats maybe someone with more experience with super virulent bugs will chime in.

my hunch would you are dealing with two seperate issues that happened to coincide. maybe the stress of being alone allowed the already compromised pygmy to get pushed over the edge. had she been wormed with something effective any time recently or ever? still betting on the milk replacer killing the kid directly or indirectly. don't beat yourself up though. live and learn. blame the formula companies that take advantage of newbies and sell them that crap (and for me blame the enviroment that has been fostered in our society that is is perfectly normal and acceptable to feed human babies formula making people assume it is pefectly normal safe and acceptable to feed other species formula) also if the pygmy was not cared for properly for most of her life she could have had all kinds of issues that contributed to her death.

[pokyone42]

What is the common denominator here? They were in together. They ate the same hay, but so have the others... they both had the same milk replacer... Hmmmm... Remember the pet food fiasco? Who knows? Maybe it was a spoiled bag of replacer? Not much help here... I am sorry you lost them.

[Minelson]

I really don't know what could have happened...but I am so sorry for your loss. It's so sad for you

[Sweet Goats]

My questions also was did they have a CDT shots? I can not believe it was the milk replacer at all. Please do not bet your self up on that. I have NEVER had a problem, but I use one that is for goats.

I would guess it was Entrotoxiuma (sp)

[Alice In TX/MO]

Info about enterotoxemia...
http://www.goatworld.com/articles/en...toxemia2.shtml