We have had several reindeer calves born this year, seven in all, expecting around a few more.
As usual, we started several of them on the bottle. We usually leave the babies on their moms for about five days, then pull them. Reindeer have pretty weak immune systms for the first three months of life, so we really like to give them a good start on their dams.
The bottle fed calves are isolated from the rest of the deer and other exotics. In fact they are on a completely separate farm from the whitetail deer and fallow deer.
The bottle fed calves slowly started all to exhibit some very unusual symptoms. They were getting tremors, and going off the milk. They did not have a high or low temp, just normal 101.5. They did not start off with scours. They just started to lose control, looked neurological. They wanted the bottle, but could not control their movements, and would fall over and hit the ground.
Again, no fever, no wheezing, no scours. We had never seen anything like it. All of the bottle raised calves were exhibiting the same signs. By about day 4 or 5, they started to scour.
At this point we had already had the vet out several times, pulled blood for cbc, chem panel, and fecal sample for testing. We had them on draxin, a sulfa drug for the scours, had them on vitamin B-12 shots, and were running fluids I -V. Some of the deer started to show subtle signs of recovery. But two had already passed. So we sent them out to have necropsy reports.
The vets were not really sure what had happened, and with everything getting sent out, we had no immediate answer. They seemed to think some virus, toxin, or bacteria was the cause.
We had no choice but to change milk replacers just in case. Still nothing helped. We had a few of the calves on I V at the vet clinic every four hours.
All of our calves on the cows were uneffected.
Finally, the begining of the tests started to come back. The calves were coming up positive for giardia.
We have never seen anything like this, or were we prepared for it. We run regular fecal flotations at our vet's office, but they said that giardia can be hard to spot. They usually recommend sending it out to bigger labs with higher powered microscopes.
If we had not sent all of these tests out to the University of Minnesota, don't know that we would even have gotten anything back.
We were told that the giardia can spread via animal to animal, natural water ways, the soil, and fecal matter. The cows can literally lay down in cyst infested fecal matter, and the calves can pic it up from nursing on their mothers.
Has anyone out there successfully treated this on their deer herds, and if so, what has worked best?
Our reindeer are very handleable compared to our whitetail deer. We can give oral and injectable drugs rather easily.
Any advice?
Thanks,
Steve
As usual, we started several of them on the bottle. We usually leave the babies on their moms for about five days, then pull them. Reindeer have pretty weak immune systms for the first three months of life, so we really like to give them a good start on their dams.
The bottle fed calves are isolated from the rest of the deer and other exotics. In fact they are on a completely separate farm from the whitetail deer and fallow deer.
The bottle fed calves slowly started all to exhibit some very unusual symptoms. They were getting tremors, and going off the milk. They did not have a high or low temp, just normal 101.5. They did not start off with scours. They just started to lose control, looked neurological. They wanted the bottle, but could not control their movements, and would fall over and hit the ground.
Again, no fever, no wheezing, no scours. We had never seen anything like it. All of the bottle raised calves were exhibiting the same signs. By about day 4 or 5, they started to scour.
At this point we had already had the vet out several times, pulled blood for cbc, chem panel, and fecal sample for testing. We had them on draxin, a sulfa drug for the scours, had them on vitamin B-12 shots, and were running fluids I -V. Some of the deer started to show subtle signs of recovery. But two had already passed. So we sent them out to have necropsy reports.
The vets were not really sure what had happened, and with everything getting sent out, we had no immediate answer. They seemed to think some virus, toxin, or bacteria was the cause.
We had no choice but to change milk replacers just in case. Still nothing helped. We had a few of the calves on I V at the vet clinic every four hours.
All of our calves on the cows were uneffected.
Finally, the begining of the tests started to come back. The calves were coming up positive for giardia.
We have never seen anything like this, or were we prepared for it. We run regular fecal flotations at our vet's office, but they said that giardia can be hard to spot. They usually recommend sending it out to bigger labs with higher powered microscopes.
If we had not sent all of these tests out to the University of Minnesota, don't know that we would even have gotten anything back.
We were told that the giardia can spread via animal to animal, natural water ways, the soil, and fecal matter. The cows can literally lay down in cyst infested fecal matter, and the calves can pic it up from nursing on their mothers.
Has anyone out there successfully treated this on their deer herds, and if so, what has worked best?
Our reindeer are very handleable compared to our whitetail deer. We can give oral and injectable drugs rather easily.
Any advice?
Thanks,
Steve
