I have started a number of threads about feet. In the relatively short time I have personally cared for cattle, feet have been my number one concern. I have a cow that limped all winter. She is 2000 pounds. I gave her aspirin for about a week or 10 days. She still limped. I called the vet and he could not find the problem but like you concluded on your bull, he concluded it was "higher up". He said that the extreme action would be to take her in and x-ray it. But there still might not be anything you can do if it turned out to be a strain or inflammation other that say, "yeah, there it is". She is totally fine right now. I have steep pastures, and I think they just slip, fall or come down wrong on their feet just like people do. My bull does a lot of walking along a long stretch of fence with my neighbor who has cows. He sometimes comes in limping but it goes away in a day or three.
I would use the aspirin to relieve the pain and as an antiinflammatory. But being this bad, I would have to wonder if it is a serious tissue injury. A good friend that runs way more cattle than I will ever think of having, recently had one of his bulls come in limping. He thought footrot and used LA 200. But it continued. He called the vet. The bull was in the barn. Jumped the panel and breed a heifer. When the vet examined him - same vet I use -, he said there was a complete separation up in the shoulder and that the best remedy was to sell him while he could still walk well and go into the ring.
Hope you have good outcome. I hate foot problems in cattle.
PS. I have arrived at the hypothesis that cattleman see a limp and just think footrot. All my cattle friends seem to do that.
