# Goats and sheep with cloudy eyes?



## C. Marie (Dec 26, 2007)

I just posted this on the Sheep board but since I have a goat with this problem now I wanted to ask all of you goat people.

So last night I found a dead 7 month old lamb and freaked because this is the third case in the last couple months. 

I have a few barbados hair sheep in with my goat herd and they have been very healthy until this year. I sold a few ewes in September and retained their lambs, so they were weaned at about 5 months. A couple of them were out of first fresheners and had been small and unthrifty. 

One developed what I figured to be pneumonia after spending a couple days holed up in the barn during an early snowstorm and I treated her unsuccessfully with pennicilin and banamine for a couple of days before she died. I thought she was dead when I first found her sick, she was laid out on the ground covered in dirt and I figured she had been trampled, but when I picked her up she revived and ate with good appetite right until the end. Her eyes had turned cloudy and white from being filled with dirt and manure from the floor of the barn. The only other symptoms I noted were that there was a slight hitch in her breathing and a very little nasal discharge. she seemed to be improving then started trying to lie down then quickly get up, probably from fluid in her lungs, and she was dead by the next morning. 

The second unthrifty lamb got sick a few weeks later, with just that awful hunched in look so I used tylan and banamine this time, again with no success and it took just a day for her to die. Just before she died she flopped her head in the dirt and got those cloudy white eyes.

Case number three was totally unexpected, it was dark and blustery the night before when I had fed them and I had not noticed him, he looked healthy enough the day before. Checked his eyes and they were cloudy and white, though he had been dead for a couple hours maybe, rigor mortis hadn't completely set in.

So I freaked out, three times in a row is more than coincidence, and checked all the other animals and found a 6 month old goat with a cloudy eye, otherwise looking healthy. He is getting penicillin in his eye and I am watching closely but what on earth is going on here? As always it is the weekend, when animal disasters always strike, does anybody have any advice for me while I worry before the vet opens tomorrow? I think am going to dose all of them with sulfadomethoxine today but what else should I do?


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Pinkeye is common for causing cloudy eyes and can have a rapid onset. There are other reasons for cloudy eyes - immune, fungal, direct damage, burns and probably more? Maybe someone else can chime in. Though, pinkeye would not cause the rest of the symptoms. I would assume that most of your symptoms are related - unthrifty lambs that didn't seem to have a good start? What do you do for coccidia/parasite control? Do you do fecals? Heavy parasitism and poor condition can preclude many diseases - make them much more susceptible to a whole host of things. 

As for the white eyes, it could very well be exactly what it seems - direct irritant/ulceration from dirt in the eyes, and/or bacterial infection from this direct irritation. Post death, it could be from the eye drying out, plus or minus damage.

Pinkeye, which has a few causes, can be highly contagious. Especially among susceptible animals - young animals, young unthrifty/sick animals. 

Chlamydia in a herd can also cause endemic pinkeye problems. 


As for sulfa, I wouldn't if you're going to have the vet out soon. Mainly because you have no idea what you're targeting at this point and sulfas may not even work. Antibiotics may help if you know what you're treating. Sulfa wouldn't be my go to for pneumonia or pinkeye. If you do have a vet out, treating with antibiotics now would mean that if there was a diagnostic bacterial sample your vet would like to send out to help you, you might not grow anything because the antibiotic is in the system. 

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/e...rview_of_infectious_keratoconjunctivitis.html

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p...eatment_of_infectious_disease_of_the_eye.html


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## C. Marie (Dec 26, 2007)

Thank you for the reply, it is calming me down.  

I was thinking along the lines of unthriftiness, bad start and stress being the culprits leading to pneumonia also and drat you are right, I haven't dewormed for too long. I don't do fecal testing. I am in a dry area of Montana and have done well for several years using sulfadimethoxine for coccidia prevention for the babies in the spring and dosing alternatively with quest and ivermectin after wet weather in the summer and fall and feeding them garlic once in a while. I have had deworming on my to do list for a couple months and darn it, I didn't get it done. 

So after a good hard look at everyone yesterday I can definitely see signs of worm loads and was thinking that I would use the sulfadimethoxine to knock back any coccidia and if it happened to be bacterial pneumonia taking out the sheep it might help out there too. Then I would worm them with ivermectin. They cloudy eyes are all explainable by dirt irritation, the one goat that has it isn't showing any other symptoms and we have had two days of strong winds blowing junk around.

I was just so scared that it might be some awful disease that I have never heard of taking them out I just had to ask.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

Are they eating goat pellets and minerals?


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## C. Marie (Dec 26, 2007)

The goats get replamin plus gel once a week, the sheep get some of that sketchy sheep mineral block from the feed store once in a while, probably not helping any. They don't get species specific pellets because the goats and sheep are all together, I feed some sweet cob with their alfalfa - timothy - beet pulp pellet mix. The milking does get goat lactation pellets while they are being milked. So far there is no sign of disease in any of the older animals, just babies from this year.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Usually when you get lax with parasites is when you see problems. I would personally advise against routine deworming with ivermectin as it leads to parasite resistance. An easy and cheap way to monitor fecals is to send to this place, which does them for 5.00. Turn around time is quick. I send priority and usually get results the same day they arrive. http://midamericaagresearch.net/


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