Selenium and Newborns
This topic comes up often about this time of year. We dealt with a selenium deficiency years ago even though our area is not known for such a problem. Our vet wouldn't believe it even though we our herd was a textbook case until we sent off samples to Texas A&M and the results showed severe selenium deficiency.
Meanwhile a friend and colleague of mine from an area known to be selenium deficient was having some of the same symptoms and people were advising her to supplement with selenium. I encouraged her to test for selenium levels first so she had a baseline and could determine that her treatment was working. I don't know that she did before she ended up losing an animal that was born on her place and the necropsy came back showing severe selenium toxicity killed the goat.
It turns out that the symptoms of selenium toxicity and the symptoms of selenium deficiency mimic each other and the margin of safety is narrow. That means that the amount of selenium between toxicity (so much it's life threatening) and deficiency (so low it:s life threatening) isn't much. This is why nearly every feed and a lot of supplements are labeled with a max level of selenium in the product so people can make sure they aren't overdosing or under dosing.
Yet any kid that's born t that appears to be a little weak results in the advice to immediately supplement the newborn with selenium. To complicate matters, weak kids strengthen with good care so people who advise others to go ahead and give selenium to a newborn that appears weak then claim the resulting recovery is due to the treatment when it's actually coincidental to the treatment (the kid would have gained strength with or without selenium supplementation).
This video shows what selenium deficiency looks like in a kid (it rarely displays in newborns as weakness in the hind end according to Merck, BTW):
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/multimedia/video/white-muscle-disease-goat
One thing I've often pointed out is that there are multiple symptoms of selenium deficiency. Rarely will you see only one symptom in a group of animals. It's also unusual for only one kid in a litter to be impacted or one animal in a herd unless that animal is a recent addition or has some big difference in health history.
When a producer friend of mine had a selenium deficiency problem in their herd, they tested because they had an entire litter of their fastest growing triplets about old enough to wean that were all showing varying degrees of weakness in the hindquarters. They were strong, healthy, vigorous kids with no signs of anemia or parasite overload and almost overnight they were impacted by white muscle disease. Going over signs of selenium deficiency led to the realization that they had actually missed numerous previous signs throughout the herd. Things to look for include, but are not limited to lowered fertility, miscarriages, thickened birth sacks (which result in stillbirths if a human isn't around to open the sack) and retained placentas (defined as a placenta that isn't expelled withing 24 hours). It can also cause insufficient heart development that will catch up with kids as they approach weaning age if it isn't corrected before that. Another consideration is that if all the animals are under the same management (diet, supplements, etc), then there shouldn't be an isolated case. Does with normal selenium levels aren't likely giving birth to kids with either toxic levels or deficiencies in selenium, so testing a few does before they are due would give a sense of the status of the whole herd from which to make adjustments and set expectations as well as establish a baseline so it can be determined if any necessary treatment is successful or not.
I think my experience and that of my friend illustrates well why testing selenium levels before treating is important. We were being advised by others the exact opposite of the care our animals needed because guessing when it comes to selenium can be dangerous. Please test if you have any concerns about the selenium levels in your livestock. It's not cheap, but it's more cost effective in the long run.
