# Buck down!



## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

Our buck is down wont get up to eat or anything...is in obvious pain in his stomach area. Temp is 101.5 Any ideas and help would be greatly appreciated. Was fine one day and down the next thanks, Sara


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

Have you seen him pee?

He may have urinary stones.....


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

I havent and that did cross my mind...but i havent been here that much with school and everything.


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## KW Farms (Jun 21, 2008)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

Bloat? Looks up on here treatment for bloat...there are a lot of threads already started on it...though it may not be what's going on, but you might just want to check some out and see if it's similar to his symptoms.


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## StaceyRosado (Oct 5, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

how long has he been down for? if you havent seen him in a couple days it concerns me that he may have been down for a while.


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## bheila (Jan 10, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

When you say stomach area do you mean near his rumen or under where he pees? I'd suspect UC because that's what our wether did when he had it.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

If it's urinary calculi:

Go ahead and remove the pizzle first. It's not that difficult a procedure, really. Just sit the goat on his rump and have him lean back against someone who can hold him, reach down just ahead of the testes with one hand and take the upper part of the sheath with the other, and kinda push your hands toward one another...that should externalize the penis. From there, you'll see a little stringy thing that comes off the very tip end of his penis -- cut the stringy thing off. It's not as bad as it sounds, trust me.

After that...

Ammonium chloride drench, 250-300mg/kg of bodyweight daily for about a week. Give him the first one right away.

If you can get ahold of acepromazine (will require a vet, since it's Rx only) give him enough for "sedation without recumbancy"...enough to make him loopy, but not enough to knock him out completely. Ace is a smooth muscle relaxer.. If he has stones caught up in the 'sigmoid flexure,' it will spasm...the ace will relieve that. I *personally witnessed* my own UC buckling let loose of a perfectly normal stream of urine after a shot of acepromazine -- IT HELPS.

Banamine...1ml/100lbs of bodyweight. It's an NSAID, and you're using it primarily for the anti-inflammatory property in this case. The UC irritates the urethra, which prompts an inflammatory response that ABSOLUTELY CAN and WILL swell them shut, unless treated.

Dexamethasone...1ml/20lbs, IM, once a day for at least a week and then tapered off from there. Dex will basically prevent the immune system from swelling the urethra shut after the banamine wears off.

PenG...1ml/15lbs of goat, 2x/day for about 10 days. Dexamethasone will impair his immune system, so he'll needs antibiotics while he's on the dex. Not to mention, he may very well have developed a urinary tract infection which raised his urine pH and led to the UC in the first place..

Good luck. The UC buckling we had was almost completely locked up, to the point that he had to grunt so hard his eyeballs bugged out just to be able to dribble.. He was miserable. He got better with ammonium chloride and a little banamine, but then the inflammation set in and he locked up to the point of dribbling again. We toyed with dex just enough to keep him going, and he got several shots of ace (and another drug called dibenzylene, which I really don't think was all that helpful), but finally had to put him on several days worth of dexamethasone in a row before he began to improve. Probably took a month or more to reach a resolution, simply because we didn't really know what we were doing and had no real example to go by.

His urine stream, to this day, isn't what I'd call optimal....but he's almost 2 years old now, and in FULL RUT...yellow face and all.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

How is your goat today? 


> Go ahead and remove the pizzle first. It's not that difficult a procedure, really


 if you don't know what you are doing.... I don't know that I'd Attempt it... me personally ...I'd seek a vet... :hug:


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

That probably comes from me having paid to have it done once and thinking to myself...now, c'mon...if you can give shots and trim hooves, you can do THAT. Also, I guess I just want people to realize that it's not as complicated as it sounds, and that if they need to do it at hom, it's actually quite simple.

You're right, though...probably would be wise to at least *advise* that people seek counsel from a vet first, if they're new to it.


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## StaceyRosado (Oct 5, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

haha Ive done it adn I had no idea what I was doing -- ok Ashley did it (she wont let me live it down EVER) and as was stated its not hard. Once you know its the death of the animal or cutting the end off, you do what is necessary to relieve their pain. It worked wonders and now Dude is a happy buck one year later with 7+ kids on the ground this spring


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## sweetgoats (Oct 18, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

How are things going? Please keep us updated.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

Just to clarify...and, as a guy, I feel this is IMPERITIVE...lol...you're not really "cutting the end off" anyway! 

You're just snipping the little stringy thing that comes off the end...it's just an extension of the urethra, maybe 3/4" long. That's all.. If you find yourself preparing to saw through any substantial weiner meat in your effort to snip the pizzle, STOP...CALL A VET.

LOL


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## mrs. lam (Apr 20, 2010)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

:ROFL: CMJ. You just ain't right. :slapfloor:


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## KW Farms (Jun 21, 2008)

*EMERGENCY!*

Lol...


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## citylights (Jul 3, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

CMJ, while your delivery was "interesting," your facts are good. thanks for th einfo! May I never need it.


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

OMG CMJ LOL!!!

Any updates on the buck? I sure hope he is okay!


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

LOL CMJ :laugh:

How is he doing Sara? :hug:


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

sorry hsvent been on in a while...the vet told us it was uc and we could do surgury which then he wouldnt be able to breed anymore and would be useless or we could try 3 ounces of vinegar and a shot of penn 2X a day...chances were he wasnt going to make it. I was tempted to do the surgury but paying for it and his feed for the rest of his life and knowing it might not fix the problem wasnt really an option right now so we did the vinegar and penn and it worked he is now back to himself! So although the vinegar messed up his mouth a little it is healing and he is up eating, drinking, and peeing again! My only concern is...is it likely to happen again?


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

Glad the vinegar has worked.... :thumb:

There is a possibility... it can happen again..... but... it helps to give something with Ammonium Chloride in it... or feed the supplement...to prevent it from happening..... and sometimes we have change the way we feed..... :hug:

Ammonium Chloride
http://www.hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/ ... uctid=3485


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## StaceyRosado (Oct 5, 2007)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*

If it does happen again doing a cmjust0 said won't take away his breeding ability but help him pass stones easier.

I would feed him grain with ammonium cloride in it or top his feed with ammopnium cloride.


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## myfainters (Oct 30, 2009)

*Re: EMERGENCY!*



cmjust0 said:


> Just to clarify...and, as a guy, I feel this is IMPERITIVE...lol...you're not really "cutting the end off" anyway!
> 
> You're just snipping the little stringy thing that comes off the end...it's just an extension of the urethra, maybe 3/4" long. That's all.. If you find yourself preparing to saw through any substantial weiner meat in your effort to snip the pizzle, STOP...CALL A VET.
> 
> LOL


Saw through any Weiner meat??? :ROFL: :slapfloor: My husband would vomit if I repeated that sentence! :laugh:


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

First of all, the surgery the vet was recommending wasn't a simple snip of the pizzle...chances are (and I'd say it's like a 99.99% chance) he was talking about a urethrostemy, which is basically where they turn him into a girl. Definitely no breeding after that, and based on what my vet told me, they tend to have lifelong complications after a urethrostemy anyway. We were offered the same surgery with our UC buckling...I'd have had him euthanized him before doing that...and that has nothing to do with the cost of the procedure, nor the cost of keeping him up afterward, nor the fact that he'd no longer be a breeder.

Strictly a quality of life thing.. 

Now....the fact that your buck's issue cleared up with vinegar and PenG injections indicates to me that it may not have been UC to begin with. Vinegar *rarely* (if ever) does anything to clear up UC, but PenG is pretty good at clearing urinary tract infections. And UTIs can mimic UC.. 

I'm sure you see where I'm going with that line of reasoning.

Now, I'm not saying it absolutely wasn't UC, as I've heard *rare* instances where folks claim they "pass a big stone" and are fine....but did your vet even take the buck's temperature? Something tells me....no. I could be wrong, but.....well, I'd say if you called your vet right now and asked "Could this have been a simple UTI?", the vet would agree that it's possible.

And now that I'm thinking about it, it's probably worth determining whether this buck is really even a strong candidate for UC in the first place?...just being male is kinda only half the picture. There are other risk factors like age, diet, etc.. So, how old is the buck again? And what's his diet like?...what kind of grain, hay, minerals, etc.. And does he have access to *clean* water, all the time? And he's an *intact* male, right?...not a wether?

FWIW...the vet should have snipped his pizzle right away. First thing. And he should have known enough to give the goat *some kind* of anti-inflammatory, if it was only a shot of banamine. And to have suggested vinegar instead of soluble ammonium chloride -- AC being the *standard treatment* for urinary calculi -- is pretty suspect. Drenching with vinegar is the kind of thing one ol' timer tells another ol' timer, followed shortly by "but it usually doesn't work" .... A vet really should know better, though.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I'd consider the possibility that it may be time to seek out a new goat vet. Given that he jumped straight to urethrostemy, I'd hazard a guess that they're probably far more used to dealing with neutered male housecats than buck goats.

Anyway...keep a close eye on you buck.. If he starts back up again -- and if it *was* UC that caused this, it's somewhat likely that he will simply because of inflammation setting in -- I'd start him on the AC/Ace/ Banamine/Dex thing I mentioned earlier. 

And sometimes you just have to TELL the vet what you want.....


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## citylights (Jul 3, 2009)

What CMJ said!


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

For what it's worth...

I got a call on a case of urinary calculi several weeks ago.. I'm the only person in this area that anybody knows of who actually pulled one through it, so when it's suspected, I get calls..

I actually missed this call when it came in, but it was from a good friend of mine, so I called him back several hours later and he said it was about a case of UC in someone else's show wether...at a show. Uh oh. He said it was OK, though, that they'd gotten it all worked out.

Really?...how? 

"We cut the end of it off." 

Uhhh, you mean the pizzle, right?

"No...we cut the whole end of it off."

Oh...how'd he like that?

"He liked it pretty good when he started peeing again."

Fair enough, I guess...he's a wether, so I guess it doesn't really matter. YIKES, but...whatever works, I guess. Turns out, the owner is a friend of mine too, so I get him on the phone.

I told him...make sure the wether gets ammonium chloride, PenG, banamine, and dexamethasone, and if he locks up again, try some acepromazine. He wrote it down...asks me the dosage, duration, etc. I told him to keep him on the dex for about a week @ 1ml/20lbs or so, then taper him down over a few days...and keep him on PenG in the meantime.

About 10days later, I get another call...same guy, same wether, same problem. He's looking for a magic bullet. No such thing. I ask him if he was still on the dex.

Nope.

I asked how long he'd done it -- 3 days.

That's not enough. 

Reason he was only on dex for 3 days is because when he went to the vet and said he wanted dex, the vet balked...didn't see any reason to employ dex for UC. The owner tried to explain to him about the inflammation, and the vet just wasn't having it. He finally had to say "Look, I know a guy who pulled one through and this is what he did." The vet relented and hesitantly gave him 3-days worth of dex.

I told him to go back and *buy a bottle* if he could, since he raises show/market wethers on the regular...this won't be his last rodeo with UC, by a long shot. I also told him that if he couldn't get anymore dex because his vet's an ignoramus, let me know...I have a bottle, and I can get more whenever I need it. I'd be happy to share..

That was the last I heard for a while, so I asked my buddy just before the last show & sale how our other buddy's UC wether faired...said he was still kicking right along.

The show and sale was last week...and so far as I know, the little guy made it to the kill truck afterward. 

I know -- not really a *classic* fairytale ending, but that was this guy's destiny all along...and the goal was basically to keep him alive long enough to go through the shows and be sold. So...mission accomplished. 

The point I'm trying to make is that in cases of UC, anti-inflammatories like Dexamethasone save lives, but even vets who actually *know* what UC is DO NOT seem to realize what a huge, gigantic, enormous role the goat's inflammatory response plays in the whole situation.. Inflammation is just not something that's not on the radar when treating UC.. Most of the treatment protocols end with treating the stones, so the prognosis is -- and shall remain -- poor. Needless to say, my own personal belief is that the prognosis is poor *because of* the inflammation.

So, again...sometimes you just have to *TELL* the vet what you want and refuse to take no for an answer.


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

Wow, that was awesome, awesome information on trating UC. Thanks so much, I hope we never have to deal with it, but in reality, I also know anything is possible. I need to copy your posts and put them in my notes


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## mrs. lam (Apr 20, 2010)

Can you give goats cranberry juice? Just a thought if it was a bladder infection. Worked for me. :greengrin: 

I have 6 wethers. As long as they get the AC in the feed, they do fine. Murray has been the only one (knock on wood) to have a problem. Switched feed and all seems good.

Gina


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

My UC buckling was on goat-labelled feed w/ ammonium chloride and a proper 2:1 Ca ratio. Having proper grain only *helps* prevent UC -- it's not a guarantee... Unfortunately..


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## StaceyRosado (Oct 5, 2007)

the thing with UC it seems to be genetic or diet related. I say its like cholesterol - you can get from genetics or from bad diet.


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## cmjust0 (Oct 8, 2009)

Yep, and bacteria can play a role, too.. You sorta get into a chicken/egg situation with bacteria, though.. 

UTIs can raise the pH of the urine, and high urine pH (high, meaning, basic...not acidic enouch) can lead to the precipitation of struvite stones. 

The egg/chicken reversal there is that metabolic or endocrine...issues...can cause the urine pH to be too high "normally," which can invite bacterial infections that exacerbate the situation and/or precipitate struvite.

Even if you can pin down a combination UTI/struvite situation -- which is more or less impossible without a urine culture, since all the other markers (high pH, protein, etc) are identical -- you'll probably still never know which came first.. 

All that's why I *always* recommend PenG as part of the treatment in cases of urinary calculi..


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

I haven't been on in forever...but we got him better for about a month and then it came back. We had to put him down..thaks for all your help guys.


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## liz (Oct 5, 2007)

I'm so sorry Sarah :hug:


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

thanks Liz,, it was really hard but he was suffering and we did what we had to do.


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## KW Farms (Jun 21, 2008)

I'm sorry Sara.  That must have been really hard. Sounds like you did your very best for him though.


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

thakns kylee, we really tried everything but he just wasnt getting better.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

Oh no...I am very sorry....  :hug:


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## goatnutty (Oct 9, 2007)

Thanks Pam...it happens I guess. Still sad but you know they aren't hurting anymore.


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