Yesterday I lost a 5 day old lamb I was hand rearing. He was my first ever attempt at hand rearing and seems to have died of something like a blocked bowel. He was a tiny wee thing, smallest of triplets, and at first I thought I’d either made the beginner error of holding the bottle at the wrong angle and given him bloat, or that his bowel just wasn’t developed enough at birth and he couldn’t survive, but...
He nearly died on his 3rd day and I took him to the vet. The vet said he had a fever and was dehydrated, put him on a drip for 4 hours and gave me antibiotics and what I thought were rehydration salts to give him at home. The rehydration salts turned out to be a muddy brown suspension when mixed up and didn’t fully dissolve, which I thought was odd, but figured the vet knew what he was doing.
He did really well for the next 48 hours and was rapidly putting on weight, then on day 5 he abruptly refused his night-time bottle. He went downhill rapidly through the night and the next day and died in my arms at 5.30pm on his 6th day. As I was cleaning up after he died, I looked more closely at the package I’d been given, and they weren’t just electrolytes, it was diarrhoea stopper with stool bulking agents and vegetable powder.
I’m pretty sure Bo died of a blocked bowel. The symptoms weren’t quite right for bloat, they came on too gradually and he took too long to die, but he did have a swollen tummy and rectum. The last poo he did before he tanked was strangely solid, and I stopped trying to get fluids into him not long after he began to go downhill because it was clear giving him anything at all was hurting him.
When the vet handed him back to me he said he’d just had ‘nasty diarrhoea’ in the cage. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but with hindsight it was odd, because he didn’t have diarrhoea when he went to the vet and he didn’t have it afterwards either, just the usual dijon mustard newborn poo that was getting gradually firmer as time went by, as it should.
Stool bulking agents and vegetable powders seem like a really bad thing to be giving an animal that should be still doing runny poos and only drinking milk. Given he died of what seems like it may have been a blocked bowel, does anyone else with more experience than me think I might be right and the vet made a mistake and confused normal new born lamb poo with diarrhoea and gave me the wrong powder, which killed him?
I’m not angry with the vet, it’s a small animal practice as well as a farming one and maybe the on duty vet was the wrong specialist and just didn’t know enough about new born lambs. But I would like to know for next time this happens and also to write to them to let them know and also ask for my money back for the treatment!
Topic: Did the vet make a fatal mistake? (Read 1771 times)
