I just posted this on the Sheep board but since I have a goat with this problem now I wanted to ask all of you goat people.
So last night I found a dead 7 month old lamb and freaked because this is the third case in the last couple months.
I have a few barbados hair sheep in with my goat herd and they have been very healthy until this year. I sold a few ewes in September and retained their lambs, so they were weaned at about 5 months. A couple of them were out of first fresheners and had been small and unthrifty.
One developed what I figured to be pneumonia after spending a couple days holed up in the barn during an early snowstorm and I treated her unsuccessfully with pennicilin and banamine for a couple of days before she died. I thought she was dead when I first found her sick, she was laid out on the ground covered in dirt and I figured she had been trampled, but when I picked her up she revived and ate with good appetite right until the end. Her eyes had turned cloudy and white from being filled with dirt and manure from the floor of the barn. The only other symptoms I noted were that there was a slight hitch in her breathing and a very little nasal discharge. she seemed to be improving then started trying to lie down then quickly get up, probably from fluid in her lungs, and she was dead by the next morning.
The second unthrifty lamb got sick a few weeks later, with just that awful hunched in look so I used tylan and banamine this time, again with no success and it took just a day for her to die. Just before she died she flopped her head in the dirt and got those cloudy white eyes.
Case number three was totally unexpected, it was dark and blustery the night before when I had fed them and I had not noticed him, he looked healthy enough the day before. Checked his eyes and they were cloudy and white, though he had been dead for a couple hours maybe, rigor mortis hadn't completely set in.
So I freaked out, three times in a row is more than coincidence, and checked all the other animals and found a 6 month old goat with a cloudy eye, otherwise looking healthy. He is getting penicillin in his eye and I am watching closely but what on earth is going on here? As always it is the weekend, when animal disasters always strike, does anybody have any advice for me while I worry before the vet opens tomorrow? I think am going to dose all of them with sulfadomethoxine today but what else should I do?
So last night I found a dead 7 month old lamb and freaked because this is the third case in the last couple months.
I have a few barbados hair sheep in with my goat herd and they have been very healthy until this year. I sold a few ewes in September and retained their lambs, so they were weaned at about 5 months. A couple of them were out of first fresheners and had been small and unthrifty.
One developed what I figured to be pneumonia after spending a couple days holed up in the barn during an early snowstorm and I treated her unsuccessfully with pennicilin and banamine for a couple of days before she died. I thought she was dead when I first found her sick, she was laid out on the ground covered in dirt and I figured she had been trampled, but when I picked her up she revived and ate with good appetite right until the end. Her eyes had turned cloudy and white from being filled with dirt and manure from the floor of the barn. The only other symptoms I noted were that there was a slight hitch in her breathing and a very little nasal discharge. she seemed to be improving then started trying to lie down then quickly get up, probably from fluid in her lungs, and she was dead by the next morning.
The second unthrifty lamb got sick a few weeks later, with just that awful hunched in look so I used tylan and banamine this time, again with no success and it took just a day for her to die. Just before she died she flopped her head in the dirt and got those cloudy white eyes.
Case number three was totally unexpected, it was dark and blustery the night before when I had fed them and I had not noticed him, he looked healthy enough the day before. Checked his eyes and they were cloudy and white, though he had been dead for a couple hours maybe, rigor mortis hadn't completely set in.
So I freaked out, three times in a row is more than coincidence, and checked all the other animals and found a 6 month old goat with a cloudy eye, otherwise looking healthy. He is getting penicillin in his eye and I am watching closely but what on earth is going on here? As always it is the weekend, when animal disasters always strike, does anybody have any advice for me while I worry before the vet opens tomorrow? I think am going to dose all of them with sulfadomethoxine today but what else should I do?
