Sodium Poisoning (salt)

** I am not a veterinarian** But I still know a thing or two...
Part 1
*I've underlined and bolded the symptoms in my lamb, and halfway down there is a list of the treatments that I used. With the vital treatments in red.

Background: My mom called me up saying that our ram lamb Rainer seems to be blind. He’s up and active, but he’s not following her hand, and is not heading into the barn. Strange. She thought it might be thiamine deficiency, “that can cause blindness right?”. Yes it can, but it’s strange to be happening out of the blue to a 8ish month old ram lamb. 

About 2 weeks ago we started feeding the dumor sheep and goat protein blocks again, to help bulk up the ram lambs for their upcoming freezer date. They are still on pasture, so yeah maybe? While ont he phone I googled “sudden blindness in sheep”, what caught my eye first was thiamine/vit B deficiency, but skimming the page, salt toxicity jumped out at me too.

From past experiences with the protein blocks I know they make our sheep super duper thirsty, like they’ll down a whole bucket after a snack sesh. Which means they be salty. I asked my mom “have the boys had ready access to water / have they been drinking a lot”, yes and yes she replied. We both paused, and she said “well the buckets have been freezing over…”. Which is totally normal, and with buckets on pasture, basically unavoidable (unless you’re made of money for electric bills).

That was enough to warent a treatment plan in my book! I asked her to start dosage right away on thiamine, and water, while I did more research on proper water dosage. From past schooling in electron gradients, and sodium levels, my gut told me not to pump him full of water - for fear of seizures.

She worked on getting the meds, and sadly Rainer started to go downhill. He started to fall over, and tilt his head back. I urged her to get the vit B and water in him asap, and gently reminded that the mortality rate for salt toxicity is >50%. Thankfully the merick vet manual told me to rehydrate at .5% of the body weight. Which for him would have been around 4oz. She started dosing and I went to bed. 

By 2am Rainer was on his feet and back to drinking on his own, and munching on the block. All is well! 

Treatment: 
1ml of thiamine/vitb12 (vet prescribed bottle), orally. The bottle says to give this drug IM, but it’s fine to give orally (per vet reccomedtion). The true rec’d dosage is less then that, but with him I felt comfortable going a bit heavy. 

3-4oz of water, orally, over the course of 2 hours. You can also drench this via a tube, do subq IV, or even via enema (rec’d for dogs). Orally worked fine for Rainer, but if he had any trouble swallowing I would have opted for the tube or enema. 

* even though he was likely suffering from just salt toxicity, the vit B won’t hurt him at all. We routinely give vit b for it’s calming benefits, and it’s a key part of any of those calm gels you see in the supply stores. 

Prognosis: 
we will keep monitoring him over the next week and a half - until the slaughter date. And maybe try to get a post slaughter report, see if this caused any ulcers in his guts. 

Who doesn’t love a salt overdose scare on thanksgiving. - Belle