Some years back, University of Idaho Extension was giving workshops for ranchers to help them deal with scours. Dr. Marie Bulgin (now retired) says that if a calf is down and too weak to get up, you can usually get it up with intravenous fluid containing bicarbonate.
Ranchers who know how to give IVs can make their own fluid using distilled water, the kind you buy at the grocery store.
“To supply bicarbonate, add regular baking soda to the gallon of distilled water. Fill a plastic syringe cover (the case for a 20cc syringe) to the top with soda and put that in the water. This amount is very close to what we would weigh with a scale,” says Bulgin.
You can simply insert the IV tube (the sharp tip designed to penetrate an IV bag) into the bottom of a plastic gallon jug of distilled water (warmed to body temperature). Once you get a needle into the jugular vein of the calf, let the IV tubing fill with water, to get all the air out of it, then attach it to the inserted needle.
“You can control the speed of the flow with needle size; a 20-gauge needle in the vein will keep the flow down to a safe speed. But for a calf that’s flat out and severely dehydrated, you can usually run the fluid in faster without problems; these calves have low blood pressure and can take the additional fluid pretty fast,” explains Bulgin.
Most calves will get up after a gallon of this IV fluid.
“They may go down again if they are actively scouring, but you can give them another gallon. If they don’t get up after the first gallon, or don’t look like they are improved, their problem is more complex and not just scours, and you are probably not going to get them up,” she says.
