# My friend's goat died from bloat



## Jillis (Sep 11, 2005)

I got a panicked call from a friend of mine who raises Nigerian Dwarf goats from championship bloodlines. About 2 months ago, she lost a beautiful blue-eyed doeling (about 9 months old) to what seemed to be Listeriosis, a classic case. The vet thought she had a head injury causing the symptoms, but they were calssic listeriosis symptoms, that responded to the treatment for listeriosis, and when she seemed to be pulling out of it, she relapsed and died. The vet sent in bloodwork taken before she died, but the lab at Cornell lost it! 
My friend had let her roam the barn as the other goats were beating her up after she sold her brother and sister. (I bought the sister.)

Now, yesterday, she called about the mother to the doeling who died. She was very bloated. I told her to give her a cup of mineral or other edible oil, and several tbsp of baking soda, which she did. She massaged, she rubbed, she walked the goat with very little results. Repeated the oil and baking soda, gave a CDT, gave Mylanta, neighbor with sheep brought over a bottle of bloat medication and they gave her that, kept walking her, massaging thumping, etc. 
We had a bad snowstorm so no one could get to her and she could not get out to her vet, who is and hour's drive away. 
I called a local person who vets animals because she loves them and she talked her through tubing her on the phone, then she talked her through puncturing the rumen, which only produced a few seconds of hissing and not significant relief. She had given her banamine because she was in pain. 
Finally, the goat was in such distress that she knew the only thing to do was to shoot her. This is a $500.00 goat that produced BEAUTIFUL babies, and was much loved on her own account. I cried when she told me. 

This goat had no access to extra grain, but my friend had just recently added sunflower seeds to the ration---not an excessive amount from what she told me, either. 

The vet told her it sounded like it might have been bloat resulting from an underlying medical problem. 

I believe she did everything possible, and at the end the goat was just laying there, shivering, temp dropping...what could cause a sudden bloat like this? Is there anything she could have done to prevent it? She is afraid it is related to the listeriosis type thing that the doeling had. 

She has a small herd of very valuable animals and is living on her disability. She has severe lupus and her lungs are very affected---the medication also has caused her to become very overweight. I could hear her wheezing badly over the phone and gasping for air as she walked the goat and worked on her. Her only income from these goats is when she sells the babies. She loves them dearly and has worked very hard to educate herself on their care. They love her too. 

Any ideas that might help? She feels she is "killing" her goats. She looks to me to be taking very good care of them. 

TIA.


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## susanne (Nov 4, 2004)

this is very sad. sorry your friend lost the doe. 
i don't think it was related to the first case. jillis listeriosis and polio are going very close together. how did you differenciate the two? 
if anything with the sunflower was wrong i gues she would see more problems.
since the air could not be released she might had a twisted gut.


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## ozark_jewels (Oct 7, 2005)

susanne said:


> this is very sad. sorry your friend lost the doe.
> i don't think it was related to the first case. jillis listeriosis and polio are going very close together. how did you differenciate the two?
> if anything with the sunflower was wrong i gues she would see more problems.
> since the air could not be released she might had a twisted gut.


That is exactly what I was thinking.........Maybe??


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## Jillis (Sep 11, 2005)

susanne said:


> listeriosis and polio are going very close together. how did you differenciate the two?



Because giving B vitamin injections did not help the symptoms at all, but when they began the Oxytetracyline improvement began. Also it seemed to have all the classic symptoms of listeriosis, including the relapse.

A twisted gut makes more sense than anything else at this point...thanks, that may help her to feel a little less responsible for this tragedy.


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

It sounds to me like she did everything she possibly could, and that if it had been a normal bloat, the goat would be alive. I was guessing twisted gut even before I read the earlier replies. What a shame that it happened, but I really don't think your friend can reasonably take even a tiny bit of blame for the problem.


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## rranch (May 19, 2006)

Ok I'm curious. Ive heard of this twisted gut. Is it something they are born with or do they aquire it later some how? Like rolling over or something like that?


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

Not born with it. It's rapidly fatal. We're not talking "slightly twisted" here. Picture a gut that looks like one of those balloon animals the clowns make at the fair. Nothing moves through it at all, and it requires immediate surgery to correct, unless someone knows a trick I haven't heard about.


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## Jillis (Sep 11, 2005)

I told my friend about the twisted gut probability, it helped her a lot. 

But she did want to know how does this happen? I wonder if maybe the movement of a large bubble of gas could twist the gut, or maybe jumping around a lot, as happens with humans and intussception?


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