Angus cow thin and now stumbles??

[missusduray]

I am new here and I have a question about one of our cows. She is approx 5 years old, Angus mix breed, fall calving. Last week we brought her up away from the rest of the pastured heard because she was thin and we wanted to monitor her feeding and fatten her up. She walked fine up until yesterday. Now she stumbles. It is almost like she cant move her joints well. Her one foot is curled and she has a hard time straightening it. She has a healthy appetite and her urine and stools are normal. She still has milk but is no longer nursing since we moved her. We have her separated from all other cows as of tonight. I gave her a dose of Penicillin (combi-Pen-48). However I am not convinced that it is an infection. She does not have hoof rot. She may be pregnant but given her body condition, I am not certain. She has been with the bulls since last November so I hope she is. Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be wrong with her. She is the only one that we have noticed with this stiffness/stumbling problem. We do have another 3 cows that are thin that we are keeping an eye on.
Any information would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Kristyne

 

[Nite Hawk]

Does she have a fever?
Concerning thinness, it could be a number of things, worms, burned stomach, johnes, hardware, ketosis, and the list goes on, but thiness with stumbling, sounds like she maybe weak.Don't like the sound of it, maybe have a little chat with your vet..

 

[missusduray]

I have yet to get a temp on her because she is not the most friendly cow. I will put in a call to our vet but he never calls me back so I doubt that will get me anywhere. He is the only large animal vet in the area and has yet to be of any help with our cows. I wish I had a reliable vet.

 

[Dega Moo]

How thin is she? Where would you put her BCS? First thing we'd do here is check for anemia. When I first started here, I bet a good 5% of the cows had anaplasmosis and were rapidly degrading. Open her vulva and check the color of the inside flesh. Should be pinkish rather than white or gray.

 

[chippie]

Call and make an appointment for the vet to come look at her or haul her into his clinic.
Don't just call and ask for advice. Good luck with her.

 

[missusduray]

Chippie- I have called him to come out here several times and he wont even call and say he isnt coming. Not even when I had a large calf stuck in the birth canal!

DegaMoo- Her BCS is a 4. She wouldnt let me take her temp or check her vulva. I will get her in the squeeze in a little bit and see if I can check both those things out.

I did pick up both oxytetracycline and a shot for parasites. Can I do thoes at the same time? Will either interact with the Penicillin I already gave her yesterday?

 

[missusduray]

Ok I gave her a shot for parasites tonight. While I had her in the squeeze I checked her vulva, and it was nice and pink, so not anemia. I didnt have a thermometer available so I couldnt take her temp. Any other advice??

 

[Nite Hawk]

Does she have the "runs'which might point towards Johness?
Or is she just a heavy milker that is milking her flesh cover off?
I know it is frustrating not to have a good vet around, how far is the next available vet? And can you haul her for a check?

 

[colleen]

Go buy a digital thermometer at the dollar store or gas station. Only cost a couple of bucks and sooo very important!! Normal temp 100 to 103.5. Below indicates a problem also. It gives you a place to start anyway. Hope you figure it out!

 

[Nite Hawk]

I think if possible you should check with a vet, skinny cows happen fairly commonly, but combine that with stumbling you want to rule out something real serious such as a wasting type illness. It could be she is simply weak from losing weight, and we hope it is that simple, but it is better to know, and hopefully you can treat what is going on..

 

[aprille218]

How are your pastures? Lots of grass? New pastures or have they been there before? Could potentially be a weed causing a problem. Walk your pasture to check it out. I'd deworm her with something that takes care of liver flukes (ivomec plus). It won't hurt her to get another shot if you didn't use that dewormer. Spray her down with fly spray when you can too bugs are bad up here again this year. Also there is a lot of foot rot going around again. Cows can be thin and stumbling due to many things (injury to legs, back, bad feet, bad weeds, low selenium/ minerals). Without seeing her I'd recommend you cover all your bases by checking her over real well in the chute again and dosing with with Ivomec plus inj, fly spray, loose mineral, fresh water and a bale of hay.

 

[missusduray]

Update: The cow got a shot of Ivomec. That was what I used for parasites. Expensive but worth it. She is in our corral and has access to good hay, minerals and fresh water. Lastnight she was still stumbling and I gave her a shot of 10ml of Oxytetracyclene. She is walking much better today. Her gait is still slow and a little unsure, but she is not stumbling!! She is still the only one that was stumbling. Some of our other mommas milk dried up so there were a couple cows that were nursing up to 4 babies. Not sure why they let them but there was no way to stop it. Now all the calves are off the mommas so the skinny few (like 4 or 5) can catch up to the rest. Supplementing pasture grazing with hay and minerals. Will be doing protein tubs at the end of this week.

 

[Lucky_P]

10 ml of oxytetracycline? That's a dose for about a 220 lb animal.
If she's that small, fine, but if not you need to stop giving antibiotics, willy-nillly, to any animals, especially if you're not going to follow label directions and administer a proper dose.

 

[chippie]

Update: The cow got a shot of Ivomec. That was what I used for parasites. Expensive but worth it. She is in our corral and has access to good hay, minerals and fresh water. Lastnight she was still stumbling and I gave her a shot of 10ml of Oxytetracyclene. She is walking much better today. Her gait is still slow and a little unsure, but she is not stumbling!! She is still the only one that was stumbling. Some of our other mommas milk dried up so there were a couple cows that were nursing up to 4 babies. Not sure why they let them but there was no way to stop it. Now all the calves are off the mommas so the skinny few (like 4 or 5) can catch up to the rest. Supplementing pasture grazing with hay and minerals. Will be doing protein tubs at the end of this week.

It sounds like you should rethink your management and care for your livestock. To be honest, it sounds like your cattle are starving. A cow does not naturally dry up while it is nursing a calf. If you don't wean the calf, the cow will produce milk as long as the calf nurses. The calves started nursing the other cows because they were hungry. Plus having other skinny cows should be a huge red flag that something is wrong.

After reading the above post, I am beginning to suspect that your cow was stumbling about because she is weak due to poor nutrition and lack of groceries plus bad hooves.

 

[missusduray]

I realize that it was a low dose. I didnt want to stress her by keeping her in the chute any longer. She does not have bad hooves. My cattle are not starving! They have access to as much feed as they want! And, yes we had perfectly healthy mommas stop nursing. But we had calves nursing on other mommas even though their moms had milk. The calves are no longer with their mommas, havent been for a week. Out of 51 cows, there were a total of 5 that were skinny. 2 had hoof rot, The others were being over nursed. Like I said, I wasnt sure what was wrong with this cow. I did call the vet, twice, and he didnt return my calls or come out. I know I am not perfect but we are new to cattle and bound to make mistakes.
Chippie- If this is how you treat people on here, I am surprised anyone stays.

 

[Putangitangi]

I must say that I'd wondered the same things as Chippie, from the information you've provided. Sometimes new people are completely clueless about what a healthy animal looks like and without any more information to go on, that is a reasonable question. I've seen some appalling situations where I live where people who didn't know enough about cattle underfed them to starvation and still thought they were doing a great job.

 

[regolith]

Just saying about the multi-suckling... I've seen cows go backwards real quick a couple of times if one cow in the group isn't doing her job and a cow who has enough milk for three calves is attempting to feed five.
I'm not sure why, because these same cows are being given all the grass they can eat and would normally be milked out through the dairy, but weakness and rapid weight loss can occur within a day or two of the extra calves transferring to them.

There *are* things you can do to prevent the multi-suckling but it takes more effort than just one big pasture with a group of cows and calves on it. How long calved were the cows that dried up?
From the title of your thread the first thing anyone would expect is low nutrition but as pointed out, there are also many other things that could cause the symptoms. The more detail you can give the better advice you may get.
Keep us updated. I expect you'll be hoping to avoid a similar situation when the cows calve again; which may require an improvement in stocking rate, management or identifying for sure whatever has caused the problems this year. A vet would be a good resource to help you through this, experienced local cattlemen are next best.

If time in the chute is stressing your cow you'd be better off with long acting 'one-shot' antibiotics - administered at the right dose. I'm not familiar enough with LA200 to know if it can be used that way but certainly the forms of oxytetracycline I have access to require daily injections for 3 -5 days.

 

[chippie]

I am new here and I have a question about one of our cows. She is approx 5 years old, Angus mix breed, fall calving. Last week we brought her up away from the rest of the pastured heard because she was thin and we wanted to monitor her feeding and fatten her up. She walked fine up until yesterday. Now she stumbles. It is almost like she cant move her joints well. Her one foot is curled and she has a hard time straightening it. She has a healthy appetite and her urine and stools are normal. She still has milk but is no longer nursing since we moved her. We have her separated from all other cows as of tonight. I gave her a dose of Penicillin (combi-Pen-48). However I am not convinced that it is an infection. She does not have hoof rot. She may be pregnant but given her body condition, I am not certain. She has been with the bulls since last November so I hope she is. Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be wrong with her. She is the only one that we have noticed with this stiffness/stumbling problem. We do have another 3 cows that are thin that we are keeping an eye on.
Any information would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Kristyne

Update: The cow got a shot of Ivomec. That was what I used for parasites. Expensive but worth it. She is in our corral and has access to good hay, minerals and fresh water. Lastnight she was still stumbling and I gave her a shot of 10ml of Oxytetracyclene. She is walking much better today. Her gait is still slow and a little unsure, but she is not stumbling!! She is still the only one that was stumbling. Some of our other mommas milk dried up so there were a couple cows that were nursing up to 4 babies. Not sure why they let them but there was no way to stop it. Now all the calves are off the mommas so the skinny few (like 4 or 5) can catch up to the rest. Supplementing pasture grazing with hay and minerals. Will be doing protein tubs at the end of this week.

This is what made me think that she had bad feet and why you may have management problems. I can only go by what you say. We can not see what your cattle look like unless you post pictures.

If your vet will not come out, can you take the cattle to him? Our vet is about 45 minutes from us and it saves us money and him time by hauling the stock in. The travel fee to our house is $85.00. If you can not take the cattle in, check with your Extension Office to see if there is an agent there who can come out and evaluate and help you with your cattle. If that doesn't work, talk to your feed store and see if they know of anyone who is knowledgeable that you can call for help.
Getting help from someone who can see your cattle, where they live and how you keep them will help you more.

I'm sorry if I seem harsh, but I do care about animals even cattle. You mentioned that you have 51 cows. How many acres are they running on? How often do you worm your herd?

PS. This is rare, but an animal can suffer brain damage from parasite migration. It happened to a bull that my husband had years ago. They put the bull down and took the brain because rabies was common in the area. When the vet opened the skull they saw the hole where the parasite had traveled.

 

[Nite Hawk]

Sometimes animals can be 'funny". They can have a field full of grass, and they are not happy, they want a different kind of grass, or they figure it may not taste "right' so they will over graze one corner and not touch another, so a field full of grass doesn't always mean they are full and happy.
If your cow is pregnant and nursing 4-5 calves it very well may pull the weight and strength off of a cow.
I remember one dairy I worked on, they had a lame cow, who was lame in all 4 feet and the vet couldn't figure out what was wrong,.
He thought she had ketosis,she was not eating,losing weight etc. however she didn't have at ketosis at all.
The vet finally realized she had foot-rot in all 4 feet and the infection had gone into her system and was killing her. She was saved by lots of anti-biotics.
Also, is it possible this cow is older and has teeth problems and can't eat right?? Only a thought..
One very important note concerning antibiotics, you really shouldn't just use small amounts of antibiotics, you should use the proper amount for weight, and continue until the infection is gone because only using a small amount of antibiotics, and stopping before the infection is cleared can cause antibiotic resistant bacteria. It kills the weak backteria off, leaving the strong ones to survive and the sickness can come back with a vengence and make your animal really really sick, and the original antibiotic may not work anymore and the new "bug" is resistant to the original antibiotic.hope you find out what is going on with your cow..