Well, Never Mind

So Nature has this amazing, balanced equation with new and old life - or it just wants you to think that so it can blindside you with whatever it wants!  Friday morning, Caleb moved the animals as usual, and found Olivia and Delia already dead, and Cleo unable to walk.  Caleb remembered that Olivia had looked extremely wide one of the days before, but hadn't thought much of it (you'd think we'd have learned by now to always think something of everything!).  So apparently she was bloated - that's all the info we had on those two.  

We brought Cleo back to the house, and I figured out she had bloat as well.  She was moaning often, and couldn't stand, and had the classic big air bubble on the left side.  I gave baking soda and oil, as recommended, massaged the hard wad of material in her stomach under the bubble, but she progressively got worse until she was stretched out on her side bawling.  I finally tubed her (my first time tubing anything, but for some reason I had read the detailed instructions on tubing alpacas just the other day) as the second-to-last resort - last resort is a knife to the abdomen, basically an emergency tracheotomy for the stomach :(  The tubing went great, I got the huge bubble out - she just deflated as the tube burbled - and she went back to moaning instead of screaming.  I noticed she had nystagmus in her eyes (rhythmic ticcing) and was involuntarily curled with her nose to her udder - she wasn't seizing, but the next closest thing - and googled causes for a few minutes.  When I went back, she was dead.  

I spent the rest of the day googling various things (listeriosis, poisoning, enterotoxemia, goat polio) and making trips up the hill to watch the rest of the herd.  Spots (that I chased in labor) had been lightly moaning that morning, and 1308 had been just standing and staring.  Through the day, 1308 continued to be listless, either standing blankly or lying down the whole time, while Spots went downhill until she was sacked out flat, moaning constantly - until I dragged her partway up the hill to the car, let go because obviously I could catch her again, and then she walked off across the field, and I couldn't catch her again - then she stayed about the same as 1308 the rest of the day.  I noticed Marshmallow's eyelids were swollen as well, and about 4 pm the vet came out.

He did not think it is listeriosis - wonderful news, since we'd unthinkingly put Cleo in the milkers' pen and would have had to stop milking.  He autopsied Cleo (squeamish alert - skip this paragraph if you don't want detailed autopsy results), and basically decided it's poisoning of some sort.  She had blood in her intestines (and Spots had pooped bloody), her liver had fat lesions on it, and both her stomach and intestinal contents were just packed hard.  Unfortunately, we couldn't actually ID much of anything in the stomach, it was all too processed.  I massaged the sides of a few of my tamer goats for comparison, and a healthy goat's rumen feels like bread dough - a firm mass that you can press into, and in a few seconds has swelled back out.  These girls' rumen is like well-used playdough  - a harder mass that you can mash around, but it just sits there until you mash it the other way.  

The vet dosed Marshmallow (since we could catch her) and left me meds for the others, and Caleb picked up some Milk of Magnesia on the way home to try to flush their system of whatever toxin it's full of.  We brought Spots and her kids back to the house to a yard pen, and dosed her with everything.  We also caught 1308 and dosed her with all of it as well - she actually looked pretty good, but she'd been acting off all day and I'd rather err on the side of caution.  Nothing we're giving (steroid, pain med, B12, milk of magnesia) can hurt a healthy goat.

As of this morning, Spots looks about the same - really not bad, pretty spry, but hasn't pooped since lunchtime yesterday as far as we can tell - obviously not a good thing.  1308, on the other hand, was borderline seizing at 6 am.  We dosed her and brought her back to the house.  I poured some electrolytes in her, but I didn't have much hope - she'd already got the arched neck and nystagmus, and sure enough, she died at about 10 am. We'll spend the day periodically going and watching the herd for anyone looking at all "not right" - not that it helped any of them so far!  I think Spots is doing okay through pure orneriness! 

An especially frustrating aspect of this is that, of the sick or dead goats, all but 1308 were some of the last ones to kid in April, so they have the youngest little ones now orphaned.  Olivia was actually feeding an extra one, 1308's nephew, the little runt.  I think his mother has taken him back, but the others are suddenly weaned at 6 or 7 weeks.  I'll keep an eye on them, but they're all so wild - we've tried to supplement kids this age before, and they are just too scared of us.  

I hope things get better soon - if this toxin is a particular plant, the up-side is that they are in a new paddock every day.  We can't find anything unusual other than a single vine I can't ID.  If it is something less distinct - there are a lot of common plants that only build toxic levels of things in specific conditions, like cloudy weather, after heavy rain, following a drought, can concentrate nitrates - then we can't be sure it's over.  As usual, I'll keep you posted.  One of these days, I'd like to talk about something besides losing livestock (in both senses of the word).