We have seen several cases in goats recently who were unable to urinate due to stones blocking their urethra.  The stones, which are formed in the bladder, travel down when the animal tries to urinate and block the urethra and so the animal initially has trouble urinating.

In the early stage several or only one sign may occur.  The urine can be blood stained, the animal may have to strain to urinate or may constantly dribble, they may urinate only small volumes very often or stand for ages and keep going and going, they may just keep flagging their tail constantly.
As the problem progresses they will develop more severe symptoms, standing “saw horse” (stretching out all four limbs), distended belly, grinding teeth in pain, no urination, kicking at their sides and looking at their sides.
This stage will be rapidly followed by depression, not eating and laying down unable to get up.  They then can seizure or die suddenly.
The cause in pet goats and sheep is usually incorrect nutrition.  Most commonly the stones are phosphate based.  Goats especially should have high roughage and NO grain.  Even lucerne is too high in concentrates to be fed consistently.  It should be remembered that the origin of goats is desert, browsing (eating scrub off the ground) country.  Horse feed should NEVER be fed to small ruminants as it is not balanced for them and will cause stones. * Stones will not happen overnight if an animal has an accidental feed of horse pellets or lucerne, but as part of a regular diet you are looking for trouble.
There are a couple of surgical solutions but these are costly and traumatic and preventable with good diet.
If you do have sheep or goats in this area that look unwell, your thoughts should always be to  rule out intestinal worms, but if  that is not the issue look to what you are feeding and get veterinary advice as early intervention will produce the best outcome.  This is especially important in males.

*****remember paralysis ticks, no matter what the animal, they are always around****

*****Watch feeding your animals bones!  Recent cases saw- a chicken bone lodged in a throat and a beef bone jammed over the back teeth. ******
Take care, all at Dayboro Vets.