Dassy still looking for strait answer amount of drug

What strenght xylazene are you using? 100 mg/ml, or one of the 300+ concentrations from a med shop?



If you read the label on the telazol, it tells you how to constitute the solution so that you get a certain strength in terms of mg/ml. When you start adjusting the amount of liquid, water or xly., that you use to mix the bottle, you change that number. Then you have to do the math to figure out how much you need to give so that your sedative effect is still good enough, but not too much.



It comes down to what the ratio and strength of the final mixture you have in the bottle is, and whether you might be administering too much of one drug and not enough of the other to be effective or safe.



I think the reason this got so out of hand before is that it isn't a simple answer. There is a lot of science behind the label recommendations, and when we start messing with it and trying to make changes, it can get very complicated.

Also, we all deal with the expenses associated with telazol and many other meds that we use as deer farmers. I think most would agree, that if you are raising deer, they are valuable, probably valuable enough to justify an expensive drug used safely, instead of trying to stretch a dollar over something so serious as an anesthetic.

OK Dassy, here is the straight answer you asked for. If you deviate from lable recommendations, you will have to do so without the “blessing” of myself or anyone else on this forum, as I/we do not want to be responsible for your cost saving endeavors.



Xylazine although frequently used, has some serious drawbacks. It is VERY depressing to the heart. If the animal is excited, and so many are, the deprssing effects are even greater. These effects can range from slowing of the heart, to skipping beats, to stopping the heart entirely. Xylazine can be reversed with yohimbine(0.15 mg/kg IV), or telazoline (3 mg/kg IV.) It is important to remember that when you reverse the xylazine portion of a telazol/xylazine cocktail the animal will be under the full influence of the telazol. If you are within the first 45 minutes of the immobilization, you may well see the severe muscle stiffness and seizures due to the telazol.



Increasing the xylazine will only exaggerate the beta-blocking properties.



So here is the recommended mixture for these 2 drugs in WT deer. If you decide to risk your animal’s life to save a few dollars, good luck to you.





Xylazine and Telazol X 0.25-0.5 mg/kg T 0.25-0.5 mg/kg Mixed in the same syringe IV

I'll give it a shot dassy, but you'll need to come to your own conclussions as to what you think will work for you and your deer. I see two parts to your question. First, will it knock them down? Second, what are the health issues of mixing it that thin? As far as knock down, in my opinion, its all going to depend on how tame your deer are and how stress free you get the drugs into your deer. Lack of stress is more important to me than the drugs that I use. I go the extra mile to not let them know that a dart is coming their way. The 10 or 12 cc's you would like to use, would knock out probably 95% of my deer. The other 5% would then be the problem. I like Robbie's idea of mixing the telazol seperately, that way you can tailor each dose to the tamperament of the individual deer, which is pretty much what I've been doing. Works great for me, and saves money. Key issue, you have to know your deer! Now, as far as the health issues, Scott, Robbie, and Roger did a good job of explaining those. I have darted close to 500 deer without losing one. I have not had any of the issues they talk about. I do not dispute the facts, in any way shape or form. It's just that I haven't seen any of those problems. I'll end with a question for anyone to answer. As for the negitive side effects of xylazine, would it or would it not be better to have 1/2 or 1/4 the telazol compared to none at all??? Is it an all or nothing type deal??

After all the previous discussions and arguments we had on this matter, Dassy still wants to have someone "bless" his cost saving desires. At least this time he got the size of the bottle he was asking about correct, which means he is at least beginning to read the lables. Robert, you are right, this is how it should be, those asking get to learn something from their questions.

You are only talking about saving less that $10 per deer by taking this risk. You will have to evaluate your herd financially and ethically and decide if the savings outweighs the risk.

Dassy,

Did it ever occur to you to perform a documented study of dosage rates specific to your herd? For example, take one of your deer and using the recommended mixture rates of whatever concentration of xylazine you use, gradually reduce the total amount of the drug cocktail used each time you tranq that animal until you find the minimum dosage rate that will accomplish the plane of anesthesia you desire. If you are using 2cc's now on your bucks, you may find that 1.5 or 1.2 cc's would do the trick. Then you can realize cost reductions without risking adverse reactions from altered drug mixture rates.

I haven't seen the other hot discussions on this topic but can offer you the exact process we go through. Certainly not to cause any arguments or controversay, just to offer what works extremely well for us!



1. Fortunately we RARELY sedate deer. Even the hard antlered bucks we run through to cut off. Now, we do have to sedate the bucks to draw semen on, the bucks that have injured soft velvet antlers and does that need help to have their fawns. Other than those 3 instances, we run everything in the barn to treat.



Here is our treatment and dosages:



We mix it all the same and only adjust the amount we give to any individual animal. We mix 4cc of Xylazine (100mg) to one bottle of Telazol. This was recommended to us by a very trustworthy vet who claims with elevated levels of Xylazine comes elevated levels of the risk of capture myopathy! I am not a vet and do not know if this is accurate, but we have followed that advice with good success.



Bucks to draw semen

Yearlings - 1.5cc IM

2 yr old bucks and older - 2cc IM



Bucks in soft velvet

Yearlings - 1cc IM

2 yr old or older 1.5cc IM



Does needing help fawning

Any doe - 1cc IM



You can see from above that we give more to the bucks during semen drawing as their testosterone levels are high and it takes more to put them down.



With these dosages, we rarely ever have to give more because they don't go all the way down and they come out of it ike nothing ever happened.



We equal the dosage of Tolazine to reverse.



I have not attended the Safe Capture class so if any of this contradicts that, I apologize but am confident that this procedure is one we will stick with.