Goat Conditions: Floppy Kid Syndrome

I believe Floppy Kid Syndrome killed a couple kids this year. I say “believe” because we did a necropsy on one and ruled out other possibilities. There wasn’t a test we could do to confirm FKS.

What is Floppy Kid Syndrome?

Floppy Kid Syndrome is a metabolic disorder that is not that well understood. Floppy Kid Syndrome appears exactly as the syndrome is described. The kid is really weak and just “flops” over. This appears when they are quite young, in the case of our two kids it was within the first week of life. In the case of our two kids neither recovered and seized and died. We sent the second kid for necropsy. So I don’t 100% know what happened with the first but the symptoms were exactly the same.

What is happening metabolically?

FKS happens when the kid’s blood becomes too acidic. It is thought this can happen from consuming too much milk. It is treated with baking soda which brings the pH down. Sale Creek Veterinary Services has a great breakdown of what it is and how it is treated.

What happened in our herd?

One of the kids from a litter of triples was very weak. She was brought into the house and her temperature was checked. It was a little low, but not too bad. I warmed her up, provided molasses and kept trying to feed her but her sucking reflex was very weak. I monitored her every two hours overnight and she passed between one of the checks.

With the second kid I figured out what it was! I did not feed milk and attempted to feed her water with baking soda. At that point her suck and swallow reflex was really weak. I was able to borrow a tube feeding kid from a friend, but the doeling died while I was attempting to pass the tube to her stomach.

Lessons learned

There was one thing I did differently with these two litters than the others for the 2023 kidding season. Normally I start milking the does the day they kid. I was headed to a show and everyone was really tried from kidding season. Both of the does were experienced mothers and the main reason I milk on day one is to keep udders even and milk stand training. I decided not to milk them immediately.

In the future I will milk everyone day one. I think this helps to keep the milk supply in such a state with heavy milkers that they are more ready to kick their kids off when they have had enough. In the future I will also put does and their litters in bigger stalls. That way the kids can’t corner them to nurse as readily.

Finally if I see kids acting the way these two did I will not provide milk and will start with baking soda and electrolytes immediately. It was a sad expensive lesson to learn and I want to make sure I really do learn from it.

A very floppy kid