Thank you Sue for allowing us to post your articles. CMPK Substitute for Treating Hypocalcemia By Sue Reith THANK YOU Sue. About three years ago I was asked for help by an owner in Canada whose goat was down with hypocalcemia, but whose vet insisted it was 'pregnancy toxemia', and told her to treat for ketosis and if the doe was still alive in a few days he would come back and do a C-Section. At the time the doe was almost two weeks away from her due date. After telling me she had virtually NO access to CMPK there in Canada, this owner did the most amazing thing! She went to her local food supplement store and got a liquid product off the shelf called Liquid Cal-Mag plus vitamin D and phosphorus. This 250ml bottle cost ~ $2.95 Canadian, and a 1 tablespoon (15ml) dose (just half of the 30ml dose of CMPK I recommend using every 2 hours to fix hypocalcemia) contained 600 mg calcium, 300 mg magnesium (helps the calcium to be absorbed faster and more fully in the body) and 300mg phosphorus (without which calcium can't be freed up at all for the body to use). Her first step was to find out how much of each mineral in that whole 500ml bottle is actually available to the patient in one 30cc dose of CMPK. To do this she made the following calculations: 1 g (gram) =3D 1000mg (milligrams) 1ml (milligram) =3D1cc (cubic centimeter, the measurement used on syringes) There are approximately sixteen (16) -30ml cc doses in a 500ml bottle of CMPK. So... Each - 30 ml dose of CMPK contains roughly 650 mg calcium; 500mg potassium; 150 mg phosphorus; and 96 mg magnesium... With that info in hand, she went to the oral supplements department at Walmart and found a product called Posture-D, a calcium replacement product in tablet form for humans. Checking the content of each tablet to see how it measured up to one CMPK dose, she found that: 1 tablet of this supplement, "Posture-D, contained 600 mg calcium, 266 mg phosphorus, and 50 mg magnesium. The magnesium content was a bit low, and there was no potassium (which is an essential part of the combination as it helps maintain a normal heartbeat level while replacing the calcium) so she set about correcting these 2 factors... Potassium is routinely available in most supplement departments in 500mg tablets, so she put one 500mg potassium tablet in with the Posture-D tablet to provide the 500mg of potassium found in each 30ml dose of CMPK... And because the Posture-D tablet was low on magnesium (it contained 50mg where a CMPK dose has ~100mg), she bought a bottle of 150mg magnesium capsules and put 1/3 capsule (50mg) with the Posture-D tablet to bring up the level of magnesium to the right level. I can buy magnesium in 250mg tablets in my area in another brand... So when preparing this temporary CMPK substitute the amount of magnesium you add to the mixture will vary with the tablet strength you bought. I should point out that the doe she was treating (successfully, I hasten to add) had just freshened, so she was no longer being drained of calcium to provide for the unborn fetuses. This made treatment and recovery a little easier. She followed the CMPK regimen I recommend, 1 dose every 2 hours until the doe is behaving normally again, and then 2 doses daily thereafter, either until after she freshens if she's in late gestation, or until she's milking normally again if she's already in milk. (While I urge you to share this information with other individual goat owners, please do not reproduce the article for publication without my specific permission. Thank you. Sue Reith.) Sue Reith Carmelita Toggs Bainbridge Island WA [email protected]
