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+--- Thread: Too much! (/showthread.php?tid=4536)
Too much! - Stringinit - 07-27-2021
I learned a valuable lesson a few days ago.
Everyone has heard or has been told to not drastically change your goats diet. Which I thought I was not.
I have an old wine Vinyard, I don't make wine so the goats get all the vines. The goats have been eating and pruning the vineyard for me for 3 yrs. Which has saved me hundreds of hours of work. They have a separate pasture and don't exclusively eat grape vines but they do throughout the season get all the vines that I can't trellis, so throughout the year they have a steady supply of grape vines, almost daily.
Its been a great year for growth here in Northern California and the grapes are out of control. The other day I pruned heavily and probably gave my doe and her babies double to triple the usual amount of vines without giving them their usual alfalfa and grain. Oh man were they happy! I like to get some hay twine and wrap the vines in a big bundle and suspend the bundle from their fence.
The day of everything was just fine, fat happy momma and babies. Again it never crossed my mind that it was too much, the goats eat vines 2-3x per week. The next day, again no signs of distress. We went to work goats were happy and healthy, but by the time we got home everything was quiet from momma and the babies, not too unusual especially when its 100 out and the goats were having their siesta. It was time to give the babies some socialization with us, I walked right past Nala and the babies to grab some goat treats, I walked into the pen and Nala looked like she wasn't going to make it! It was the sickest thing, human or animal I have ever seen that wasn't going to die. I was so confused, she and the babies are strictly watched and all feed coming in comes from my hands. It looked like she was poisoned. I could tell their was something wrong with her ruman, she had green foam like stuff just around her lips and she was super fat, ears drooping and her face was buried nose down into the ground and hadn't eaten her alfalfa from that morning. Also she hadn't finished her grape vines. I knew then that the grape vines were probably the culprit. I huried and got some activated charcoal crushed up probably 5 grams and mixed it with water and squirted some down her throat I did it again an hour later. About another hour after that she managed to get to her feet and get some water. The next day she had more spring to her step and about 36hrs later she was the same bouncy happy momma she was before. Oh, there was lots of goat patties and diarrhea all over, again showing me she ate too much.
The babies never showed any signs of illness.
This was a scary and a nerve wracking experience I wanted to share. Sometimes even the normal feed/treats you give the goats can be too much.
On a side note/thought, grape vines have a high amount of water and maybe she had too much water to roughage in her ruman?
RE: Too much! - Nanno - 07-27-2021
Yikes! I'm glad she's ok! It may also be that the heat caused her to be less active than normal so her digestion didn't move things along as it should have, causing a toxic bacterial bloom in her gut with the change of diet. I'm glad she's ok now! Drenching charcoal was a good move.