Tetracycline to treat the herpes virus?

I wanted to post this for discussion and was curious to get input from members that deal with large colonies of ferals.

I have a friend with a goat farm. About two months ago, one of the Tom's brought upper respiratory into the barn after visiting a neighbouring farm.

Within weeks, all the cats were gravely ill. Copious amounts of mucous, sneezing, watery eyes. One cat even passed away.

These were healthy well fed barn cats. They get kibble and goat milk every day.

Most were barely able to breathe.

So, they decided to attempt to treat them with tetracycline normally used on goats. They mixed the orange flavoured med into the goat milk for two weeks.

By the end of the first week...they were "cured". No sneezing, no discharge ... nothing.

They have been off the med for 2 weeks and are all back to healthy cats.

Wouldn't it be worth a try, if the only other option was euthanasia?

My two indoor kitties have the feline herpes virus and the only thing that has worked on them is lysine supplements when they have a flare of it.   Is it possible these barn cats had something else wrong?   Had they been vaccinated?    Still I'm so glad the tetracycline worked thanks for sharing it with us!

Antibiotics do nothing for a virus. I suspect the cats had something bacterial going on.

Dosing by putting meds in food or drink is terribly inexact, if the cats are handleable it's best to dose them individually. Of course for ferals sometimes all we can do is add meds to the food and hope for the best.

Willowy said:

Antibiotics do nothing for a virus. I suspect the cats had something bacterial going on.

Click to expand...

Right. It perhaps began with a "cat flu" or as you say in USA, an URI, but was followed up by something else, something bacterial. This is easy happen, when the body and immune system is weakened.

And this secondary bacteria infection was helped with this tetracykline.

Otherwise, a home remedy many reports works with URI and some other virus infections, is lysine, as already mentioned.

Yes, I realize that it's a virus which is why I am perplexed on how efficient the Tetracycline was. They have numerous barn cats (25 to 30). It's impossible to vaccinate them all. Many show up and are as wild as can be.

It was perhaps...cure them or kill them. They were all suffering horribly and they were desperate to try and help them other than shooting them. (yikes)

I know cats can get secondary infections with upper.

Another thing to note, earlier this year they had problems with the herpes virus causing major eye irritations with the kittens. Perhaps you saw some of my posts as I attempted to help them.

The weak and the kittens were the worse off. If they survived, they seem to build up an immunity. Most of the older cats didn't have symptoms or less severe. They believe they got it from the goats who came down with a common herpes virus called "scabby mouth".

They tried the tetracycline at that time and it cleared all their eyes up too. Some of them had to be humanely put down (the farmer way) Their eyes were THAT bad.

So, I still find it amazing that twice now, they have seen the herpes symptoms literally disappear with these high doses.

I have been fostering for years and involved with our local shelter. We have had to put cats down for upper that would not clear. In fact, I rescued one many years ago as a four week old and could not get him off of meds before he would get another infection. I had to euthanize him at 6 months.

I think all of these cats still carry the virus but the Tetracycline must have kicked the snot out of the secondary infection.
 

tetracycline is very effective for treatment of chlamydophila felis and bordetella bronchiseptica, which are the two most common infectious agents after herpes and calicivirus. so odds are that one of these were what was affecting the cats.

Wow! Thank you Whaler! Never heard of those...googled and yes, it does sound like it.

Learn something new everyday
 

Levi68 said:

Wow! Thank you Whaler! Never heard of those...googled and yes, it does sound like it.
Learn something new everyday

 

Click to expand...

you're welcome!

a few years back i had a feral that had a rather bad case of herpes and i had been unsuccessful in trapping her. so, i researched what drugs i could try to get in her food to help with the bacterial infection that she was showing. fortunately she got better on her own.