We rear kid goats on milk replacer (as well as a few bull calves)
We always get a dietary scour on milk powder- and we're very clean!
Anyone any experience with pro/pre-biotics?
We played with milk kefir last year and may do so again this year.
Also anyone any experience with salicylic acid, or homeopathic techniques to reduce stress at weaning?
Thank you all!
we use Novilam (we have in the past used volac). Novilam is a 25 kg bag vs volacs 20kg bag- for slightly cheaper- and inthibknis Dutch, so is designed for goat rearing too.
its not he same problem as we had with volac- a simple dietary scour, they drink through it and thrive. Just very conscious that they’d be thriving even better if they dried up.
Theyre bottle fed colostrum, put on a milk replacer at their home farm (usually) and then I collect them weekly.
there’s potentially a milk change and the stress in that journey. if they’ve been on milk at the home farm theyll get going on our milk machine within 24hrs, maybe longer if they’ve been left on their mothers.
their too young for cocci are that age, and had the vets to test. So fairly adamant it’s dietary.
I tried the kefir as the milk machine has a function to suck in a liquid administer solution alongside the milk. To be honest I tried it later in the scour rather than straight away, and wasnt ready this year to try feeding it straight away.
ill get the Kefir grains going again, and maybe try that humate as a remedial in this batch!
thanks so much!
llufepoh
Don’t take this as a guide but as an experiment recently I had lamb with scour and dropped a few granules (like only 4) of humate into the bottle of milk. Cleared up the next day!
Supposed to mop up toxins. Can work for humans if you take a little after a good night out, its supposed to remove the hangover!
Thought it was interesting to share.
Are you using calf milk replacer for the goats? It could be the milk, worms or coccidiosis, illness or stress. Check temp and do egg count to rule out the second too. Calf milk powder wouldn't be suitable, if it is sheep milk powder it should be ok but they might need a copper supplement, I think scour is a symptom of copper deficiency in goats. Do they all get scour at the same time, is it straight away when they arrive or a few weeks later? I give natural yogurt to sheep to kickstart the rumen after illness but no experience with goats.