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Common cold or worse?

910 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  TDG-Farms
I am just starting my pack herd and have very little experience with goats and have a question. I have two eight week old kids and when I went to bottle feed this morning one was congested with snot all over his nose. Should I wait to take him to the vet and risk the other kid catching it or do I wait and see if its just a common cold and let him beat the bug himself? Thanks for anyone's advice and insight in to this.
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Be sure he's breathing smoothly. I had a 5 year old Saanan milk goat get pneumonia and there was congestion and snot and later I saw some breathing strangeness. At the very start I thought she was just bloaty (which she was prone to). I got her a shot to cure it and it worked wonders. However you have to work fast. I wasnt fast enough and even though she got better, she went downhill slowly after that and died from something else. Cant say if the pneumonia was the trigger or if it was a side effect, but it can be serious. I'd watch that little guy very closely.
Goats dont get common colds. Snotty noes usually means pneumonia and can kill a goat in less then a day. If it were happening here, we would instantly dose the kid with Nuflor or Excenel RTU. A good way to check is to take the goats temp. Temps over 102 are a sign of infection. Though if not caught quick enough a goat can start to drop its temp. While temps under 100 should also be considered critical as well and indicate a shutting down of the digestive system.
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