Neonatal Hypoglycemia – In newborn animals body reserves of glucose and fats are very low, and soon after birth if animal do not take colostrum severe hypoglycemia can occur. 
Causes:
(1) Excessive heat loss due to low environmental temperature in cases of inadequate heating, bedding and shelter, Also cold or wet weather.
(2) Prepartum malnutrition of dam.
(3) Bad weather preventing sucking or dam mothering.
(4) Dams which are too old to have satisfactory milk flow.
(5) Too tired mother because of prolonged parturition.
The effect of nutrition on the newborn:
(1) Newborn lambs, calves and foals are much more capable of maintaining their blood glucose levels when starved than piglets.
(2) Hypoglycemic coma may be seen in lambs.
(3) Calves are also highly resistant to insulin-produced hypoglycemia during the first 48 hours of life but are susceptible and respond convulsively to it at 7 days.
(4) In all species at birth, there are usually adequate quantities of lactase, pancreatic lipase and proteolytic enzymes with which to digest lactose, milk fat and milk proteins.
(5) In the calf, significant sucrase activity never develops with age; there are slight increases with age in amylases and maltase and the pepsin-HCI complex is not effective until about 2 weeks of age.
(6) Sucrase and maltase activities in the foal are barely detectable at birth but increase to adult levels at 7 months of age.
(7) Nutritional diarrhoea and increased incidence of infectious diarrhoea are common in calves fed poor quality milk replaces which contain relatively indigestible non-milk carbohydrates or non-milk proteins or heat-denatured skim-milk powder.
Symptoms:
(1) Tremors, weakness, recumbency, coma.
(2) Hypothermia and dehydration.
Treatment:
(1) Glucose or dextrose, 20% solution, 2 g/kg BW IV or intraperitoneal.
(2) Warming the neonate in the air at 40°C at least and thorough drying from the fetal fluid.
(3) Then feeding of 100-200 ml colostrum.
Note: Glucose, sucrose or starch should not be used for oral medication.
Failure of passive transfer (FPT)
Definition:
It is an inadequate transfer of colostral immunoglobulin to the newborn animal due to which it become susceptible to various diseases.
Causes:
(1) Poor colostral quantity and quality.
(2) Failure of ingestion or absorption of colostrum.
(3) Absence of colostrum.
Sequela of FPT:
(1) Increase infection disease morbidity and mortality.
(2) Increase the duration of pathogen shedding.
(3) Starvation and decrease weight gain.
Treatment
(1) Oral dosing of colostrum as 10% of BW in the first 24 hours, from which two litres fed in the first 6 hours of life, provide about 1g/Kg of immunoglobin.
(2) Alternative sources of immunoglobin (Patient preparation, colostrum, plasma or serum)
(3) Mix one whipped egg, one teaspoonful of olive oil to one litre of milk to be given instead of colostrum. Mother cow or goat serum can be mixed with this mixture.
