When I talked to Dr. Caesar from Rollins Animal Lab, she had a definite answer for what was wrong. I remind you that the vet had already looked at our pigs and had done a fecal exam to look for parasites with zero noted. We had already treated our pigs for pneumonia, and with one of the pigs we had dewormed it hoping to see a change in its condition as an indicator that maybe that is what was wrong. We’d noted no change.
So Dr. Caesar’s answer? Worms. Big time worms. Multiple kinds of big time worms. We don’t treat with chemicals unless there is a diagnosis, and we just couldn’t get one for some reason. Both the vet and I are stumped why we couldn’t but we have one now. That’s good news. The bad news is we now have to treat all the pigs in the barn, and all the pigs in two paddocks on each side of this affected paddock for worms.
Dr. Caesar recommended fenbendazole and Dr. Brady agreed so off to Tractor Supply I went to find the stuff. I’d never heard of it which makes me a bit of a doofus of an animal farmer but like I said we don’t use dewormers unless there is a reason. I thought we’d be injecting something else into the pigs with a needle but it turns out this stuff is a paste that comes in a squirt tube you stick in the pigs mouth. Since the pigs are happy to swallow just about anything and hygiene isn’t as critical since we aren’t giving shots it was actually pretty easy, at least for the ones in the barn. The ones outside will probably have to have a different treatment.
So it looks like the pigs I bought from the crazy old coot in Zebulon brought an infestation with them. We’ll be going with a scorched earth policy for the next few weeks to clean everything up and to break the life cycle of the worms. We are also looking hard at getting some breeding sows and a boar because every time we bring animals from off farm, we introduce some new problem. Miguel and I both think it will be worth just doing it ourselves. We’ll see.
Until we can get our own breeding going, we are going to have to deworm every new pig that hits the farm as a preventative so we don’t have a repeat of this. It will just be to break the cycle and give the pigs a clean start at their new life.
Yesterday we treated 31, 36, 34, 29, 27, 32, 33 with fenbendazole oral paste. We also ear tagged 43 and 44 and also treated them with fenbendazole. I’ll have to get a count of who has passed away because some of the ear tagged pigs are back in the main paddock. I’ll get that list and put it in a different post.
Also on 1/7/15 pig 29 received 1.5cc of Liquimyacin and 1.5cc of Enroflox
Pig 33, the one with the prolapse, had what looked like a blocked rectum. We cleaned everything off and I had to clear an internal blockage with manual interference, which is a fancy term for sticking my finger up a pigs butt. Once everything was flowing again, we treated with sugar. The prolapse is looking really good and is almost gone. It’s easy to push back inside, but it doesn’t stay inside. I have the instructions and the go ahead from the vet to perform a surgical procedure but first I have to make the device. That will be on this weekends to do list. I’ll post about it for sure.
On 1/6, we treated #33 with 3/4cc of penicillin and 1.5ccs of Enroflox and cleared a partial blockage from her prolapse.