Be Your Own Animal Medicine Man
November/December 1978
By the Mother Earth News editors
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TOP: Topical medicines . . . the easiest and best way to administer oral medications is in food or water . . . drenching. MIDDLE LEFT: A bolus gun and horse-sized boluses. MIDDLE RIGHT: A flexible stomach tube marked with tape (see text), a homemade gag, and funnel. ABOVE; LEFT: Measuring the distance from mouth to stomach . . . and placing the mouth gag (a job that takes either brute strength or considerable patience when working with goats). ABOVE, RIGHT: Using the bolus gun.
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Kansas State University veterinarian Randy Kidd is back again . . . to tell you how to treat your own pets and barnyard critters with topical and oral medications.
The medicine man of yore painted his face (or donned a "medicinal" mask), jumped around, shook rattles, and generally scared the hell out of his patients. Strangely enough, that treatment often worked: Wherever that "hell" was scared to, the disease process went right along with it!
But today's "medicine men" tend to work their "miracles" in a somewhat different manner. These days, the trend is toward finding a specific medicine (or drug) to cure or at least attack-each separate disease. Of course, some folks see this emphasis on the use of drugs as a great medical advance ... while others view it as a serious danger.
Still-even though the use of medicines certainly isn't the only "cure" game in town it is the game we currently know the most about. There are many ways to treat any animal (including the human species), but most of our recent scientific research has been directed toward the development of more efficient drugs . . . and it seems prudent to take advantage of the products of this study. Naturally, the use of any treatment whether or not that treatment involves drugs should be tempered with care, common sense, and moderation.
(Remember, also, that medicines and drugs are-by definition-any substances or mixtures used to treat disease. Many of the things that fit this description-and are effective-can be grown at home or foraged in the wild . . . they don't all come only from the large pharmaceutical houses.)
In the end, however, how regularly you medicate your animals (and how much of the medicines you give 'em) will depend upon the way you use these substances upon yourself. If you gulp down aspirin at every hint of a headache, you'll likely medicate your critters for any ailment they happen to get. ,And, if you're the stoic type-who hasn't taken a pill for years-you'll probably expect most animal illnesses to cure themselves . . . as yours have.
HANDLE WITH CARE
There's more to the proper use of medicine than buying a bottle of pills at the feed store and giving one to a beast with the sniffles and two to a critter that coughs. The idea is to attack the disease process (the cough, infection, etc.) without harming the animal. Remember that no drug is 100% effective, and almost none of 'em will work if the patient isn't also given additional tender loving care. To recover, a beast needs a warm, draft-free room, and a better supply of food and water than a healthy critter. Some sick animals even have to be force-fed!
Very few medicines are specific in their actions. This means that you can't usually kill pneumonia bacteria, for instance, without also attacking some of your animal's beneficial micro-organisms. The effectiveness of your medicine, then, will depend upon how well it attacks the bacteria that cause a disease . . . and how little harm it does to those that are helpful.
Remember, too, that some medicines have adverse side effects which can be more dangerous than the illness you're trying to cure. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, DON'T DO IT. Either call in an expert or let nature take its course. (Many diseases will heal themselves, if nothing is done to "fool Mother Nature".)
Most, if not all, of a modern medicine man's efforts should aim at preventing, rather than healing, diseases (if for no other reason than because prevention is the area that a novice or pro can most easily handle without fear of doing an animal harm).
But prevention or cure, convincin' a beast that whatever you're about to do is for its own good is about the most difficult part of administering medicine. Here are a few tips that I've picked up, though, which can help you get the job done.
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