Treating a Calf for Bloat

hi I'm Mike and today we are in life-saving mode as we take a look at Goliath who is in the middle of bloating and if we don't get this pressure off of his belly he could die on our wyoming life [Music] this is Goliath Goliath is one of our bottle caps he was born at about a hundred and two pounds when a regular calf is about 75 pounds when it's born and we all saw him be born right here on one of our videos he was backwards as a breech calf we ended up having to pull him and his mom didn't get a chance to take care of him as she was pretty cranky after the whole procedure so we've had him here as a bottle cap for the last couple months and one of the problems that he has is a gastrointestinal issue where he's really not moving things through his system as fast as he can and what's that what that's causing is actually bacteria too to be formed within his rumen which is the first compartment of the stomach and what that causes is bloat bloat is basically a buildup of gas within a calf and this is more common in the in the dairy industry where you're gonna where they do a lot of bottle feeding but as you can see he's extremely distended and having trouble breathing even a little bit as he gets up and moves so he's basically kind of like a beach ball right now he's got a bunch of gas buildup he's not too happy about it he's pretty sensitive to the touch and if we don't get this taken care of he could die within 12 to 24 hours the bloat itself has actually caused he from the milk that were feeding him at this point we are in the process of trying to wean him off of milk completely he's not able to move it fast enough through his system so it's sitting in the rumen and that milk as is causing his forming bacteria that bacteria puts off the gas which he has no way to pass so what we're going to do today is we're actually going to tube him we're gonna try to relieve some gas using doing that we're also going to introduce some basically a giant tums into his system and it's a two-part system so we're gonna try to do that today and hopefully relieve this pressure that's happening inside his belly it's one of the good things is that we do have peanut in here and we can actually really compare the size of their bellies peanut does not have any issues with any type of bloat ever happening and you can definitely tell from the side that peanut doesn't have any bloating or anything like that happening here's a straight shot right down peanut you can see that he's pretty slender all the way through if we do the same thing with Goliath you're gonna see the bloat if he wants to stand still for us you're gonna see where the bloat is coming in you can see the distension along his belly it's not good Aaron is coming with an esophageal feeder which we're going to use to to get some of this gas out of him we're gonna have to flip him yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] okay all right so we got him down not too happy about it now you can really see the distension and he just parted which is good so the first thing we're gonna do is is try to get some gas out with a tube and hopefully we can release some pressure because we're going to introduce like I said that giant tums concoction in there so we want to get a little bit of pressure off before we start putting things back in so a tube goes straight down the mouth through the esophagus into the rumen and hopefully we've got arrow up stay down and I can feel air coming out so you can definitely hear it coming out it's okay boy so he's still hard as a rock like an inflated beach ball so Aaron his here and she's mixing up what are you mixing up like boxes the baking soda but I don't have a box I have a big bag so basically we're making sodium bicarbonate okay and we're going to tube them with this and hopefully this will act like a giant tums and then we have another step to take in this whole process this isn't the first time we've had to do this with him the last time we did it he actually did recover pretty well [Music] [Music] okay so Aaron's going to go and we're actually going to give him vegetable oil now what that vegetable oil will do is remove any froth that he has built up a lot of times when that bacteria puts off that gas it's mixing up with whatever is in that room in which at this point is probably just powdered milk which is what the milk replacer that we give them and that's all mixing together which is cut which is forming a froth and that froth makes it harder for him to to breathe as it works its way up and into his lungs and whatever else so we'll give him vegetable oil now which will basically knock down all that froth inside his room and and hopefully that'll be the beginning stages of taking care of this for him so now is the fun part where we basically just stand around and wait before we go with the vegetable oil and see if he farts or burps or does anything embarrassing [Music] [Music] and while this is considered a severe case of bloat at least I would consider at that it's not life-threatening I guess because he can still get up he can still move around he has bloated in the past where he was not able to move and he basically just laid there for an entire afternoon while it all worked through him but the hope is that we caught this time we caught it early what are you doing why is he rubbing all over me today so one thing you can do with these calves too when they're in this condition is get them up and move normally this isn't something that we deal with this is kind of a dairy cow problem because a lot of times they're on milk replacer but this is one of those times we can take lessons from the dairy industry and try to help out as much as possible boy he is just solid I guess okay [Music] again [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe no oh damn you alright let's let him walk around for a little bit okay so now we're let him walk around for a little bit more and hopefully moving around will help stir some of that up a little bit and start relieving some of that pressure for him cuz he's still pretty solid okay let's walk around by twelve buddy let's go for a walk [Music] I'm gonna go grab him some penicillin which we're gonna give him orally which will hopefully combat any of the bacteria that's in there and and stop the continuation of the bloat so the the bacteria will hopefully be attacked by the penicillin and then that'll stop it from happening for now hey kid hey buddy [Music] [Music] [Music] he seems to be better when he's up when he's on his feet he'll get up now I know but he seems to be doing better when he's up and walking around so I think we get him up walking around as long as he's up and walking around he's okay if he lays down and if he lays down then we have a problem so let's get him up if we can now [Music] you kind of just begin a pain in the butt [Music] why isn't he doing this to you mom you're nice what is not quite time all right so we've pretty much done everything that we can at this point we gave them the sodium bicarbonate we gave them the vegetable oil which will reduce the froth which obviously it did we gave them penicillin to combat the bacteria that's happening inside his belly but for right now all we can do pretty much at this point is wait he's up and moving which is a good sign hopefully he'll keep walking and and get his a digestive tract working correctly he has burped he has tooted a few times so that's always good but you know the honest truth is that we're very surprised that the Goliath is still alive it's almost at Lake he's he's burning through his nine lives but we're gonna do everything we can to keep him up and going we're gonna come back and check on him in a little while of course be sure to subscribe and follow along as we have updates on what's happening with Goliath and all the other calves around here also so that's pretty much it we're gonna we're in a game of wait and see but we're gonna keep you updated and and thanks for coming along and hopefully if you run into this situation this will help you be able to combat that as well and I'm gonna put some descriptions some stuff down in the description about what we gave him and and how we were able to treat him the first time this worked the first time we're hoping that it works this time as well we don't really know the next 12 to 24 hours are crucial and we'll be keeping a really close eye on him so thank you very much for joining us today we'll see you next time right here on our Wyoming Life and I'm back here with a really quick update on Goliath here it is it's been a couple hours since we did all that to him and and hopefully he's feeling a little bit better now he's still up and moving around you can tell he's still a little bit bloated or a lot of bit bloated I guess depending how you want to look at it but he's still up he's still moving around he's coughing he's farting he's doing all the stuff he was doing before he's not quite as hard in the belly area as he was before so my hope is that as the Sun sets we can I hope that he goes to bed that he he's able to move around I think him being up and moving around has made a huge difference and hopefully he'll be okay in the morning when we come out and check him but that's our update for now he looks good and it looks like he's doing a little bit better than he was before we won't feed him tonight and and hopefully he'll get a chance to rest a little bit you can see the bloat has reduced quite a bit he's still able to move around he's still up and walking we keep him walking and hopefully tomorrow morning he's feeling just fine so that's it for us we'll check back in with him later like I said be sure to subscribe so you can follow along and see how Goliath is doing over the next few days we'll keep updating you through the blog so that's it for me today guys take it easy have a great night we'll see you tomorrow [Music]

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 607,255

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching, bloat in calves, treating bloat, bloated stomach, bloating, animal rescue videos

Id: vRJVyFWEse8

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020