I am SO SICK of yellow scours! Help anyone?

My poor little bottle babies just wont stop scouring! I would have thought by now it would have run its course but I just cant get it to stop no matter what I do.

It is a thin yellow scour, very occasionally its a little darker. They seem to scour for a few days, then are ok for a few days, then scour for a few days. They arent sick with it, still drinking their bottle and playing (with the exception of one this morning, still playing but refused the bottle). They are about 2 wks old.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but the main causes of yellow scours are salmonella, e coli and overfeeding. Salmonella and e coli I would have thought would kill them quicker than this - in a matter of days. And I'm pretty certain its not overfeeding because ordinarily I would be feeding more than what they are getting at the moment.

Now, they've had a long course of triprim, which is a trimethoprim antibiotic with sulfadiazine, which SHOULD have taken care of salmonella, e coli, and cocci if that were it. but I'm not seeing any improvement

The only thing left in my arsenal, is I'm going to change milk replacer today. Now normally, I have never ever had a problem with milk replacer. I've always used this brand with tremendous success. But they (same brand) have just released a speciality lamb and kid milk which is the same price as the one I am using now, bit more fat than the one now and a touch less protein. Will see if that maybe helps.

:? Any thoughts?

 

I cant get that here ... bugger

Fred, thanks for the recipe. But the replacer I use works out to be 85 cents per litre ... I'd have to sit down and work it out but wouldnt your recipe be much dearer than that?

 

the thing is, I'm not convinced its the milk replacer. I've raised hundreds of babies of all species on it for many years without scour problems. this is the only time I've had such a problem, and it wont respond to any of the treatments that should clear it up.

ashley, all I can get is oxytetracycline (which works well as a broad spectrum a/b for me) and trimethoprim w/ sulfadiazine (which works well as a narrow spectrum GIT a/b). Not much registered for use in goats here, and I guess ordinarily I could twist the arm of my vet to use something off label, except that these babies are to go to slaughter in 2 mths time, so I do have to be strict on using labelled drugs and observing with holding periods.

weighed them tonight, ordinarily my babies start off gaining 1kg per week, and by 3 - 4 wks they do 2kg per week. these guys, 1 of them did the 1kg/week which is good, the others did 400g per week, which is a whole lot better than I expected. I expected them to have 0 gain or have lost weight

 

I dont know if its significant or not, but I can hear their bellies sloshing around when they walk ... I guess that means the milk isnt curdling in the abomasum

 

Was talking to a cattle gal, who suggested sometimes knocking back the protein can help calf scours, and since I've changed milk powder that will take care of that, it will be interesting to see what happens

Fred, I've loaded them up on probiotics, more than I normally do. Two of them eat solid feed, pellets (which have a coccidiostat in them) and hay. The others nibble the hay but not much

Stacey, we did a 7 day course of the a/b, when normally 1-3 days is enough.

It looks like two are cleared up today, two badly scouring (one lethargic, one fine), and one almost cleared up. I'm just about to head out and start separating them, the two good ones from the rest, bleach out and lime the pens and put them into a fresh area. Fingers crossed.

 

Funny you should say that Fred, because I'm not feeling so crash hot myself today. Something has upset my stomach ...