bloat - waiting to see

[regolith]

Lost 3 cows this year to bloat, 2 on 24 Nov, 1 on 31 Dec, all three in the same paddock.
I think I've just confirmed that that one paddock is the problem. I've been drenching at low rates with bloat oil since early January, even though we *should* be well out of the bloat season which usually runs Aug - Nov. Last night I was herd testing and at first decided I was going to drench anyway, then debated putting the bloat oil in the troughs, decided I couldn't do that because they weren't used to it in the troughs and I'd have to treat about six troughs with no way of knowing which they were drinking more from, settled on not giving them any bloat oil so that I could concentrate on herd testing and going straight up after milking to check them.
Did that. All fine on short lush pasture full of flowering white clover.

Tonight they got the other half of the paddock I gave them last night and I put a fence across the paddock the three cows died in, so they could graze half of that too. Put a double quantity of bloat oil into the drench - 8 ml a cow but we'll say there was ten litres of drench mixed up at 4 ml already in the system so they would have got 6 ml... enough to control moderate bloat.
Checked them straight after milking... I couldn't wait till I was finished at the shed, just started the first rinse through the milking plant and headed on up. All seemed fine, till I noticed one cow not grazing and just got enough of a glimpse of her to identify her and see that both her sides were puffed up before she walked through the gate back to the other paddock. She was the only one. When I caught up with her again she and a few others were making tracks straight back to the cow shed (no, not normal behaviour straight after milking) so I put her back in the bail and took some photos and crisis drenched her and another two that when I looked carefully at them were also showing signs of mild bloat, and put them in another paddock. Then finished up, and went back to the paddock to check again.

This time the second cow I saw had bloat. Then another, and another... about half of everything in that half paddock, most of them had stopped grazing and were standing in the corner.
I got them out of the paddock and shut the gate. The also headed back to the shed, skipping and jumping the whole way like calves. I didn't want to crisis drench the whole herd - they've already had a quarter of the maximum dose. Going back out to look at them now, that was about forty minutes ago, my knife is still in my pocket hopefully won't need it.

 

[regolith]

Looks okay.
297's sides had gone right down. Lots of others still with mild bloat and bloat 'behaviour' (standing looking funny) but they seem reasonably comfortable. One making a lot of noise that doesn't look bloaty at all.

The vet's coming on Monday to vaccinate the calves for lepto, I'll ask him then for any ideas on safely grazing that paddock. I might just need to increase the bloat oil a lot more and watch them carefully. And ideas why that paddock when it looks exactly the same as the ones all around it, that they don't bloat on??

 

[alisonb]

All fine on short lush pasture full of flowering white clover.

What % white clover, mixed with what other grass? Could they perhaps have metabolic problems (Magnesium shortage) due to high Nitrogen?

That must have been frightening!

 

[regolith]

All survived the night. I'll try remember to take photos of the pasture late, looking good with all that rain. The whole farm is very clover dominant but I don't know what percent, could even be as high as 70% in some areas?
I'm leaning towards it being metabolic but... what you can sometimes see is free gas bloat induced by milk fever caused by other mineral imbalances. Wasn't seeing any milk fever last night and one of the ones that died was a 2 yr old. The fertiliser (chicken litter) was tipped in that paddock and spread from there. I calculated I've grazed it five times since and twice found cow(s) dead next time I went to get them.

It's very, very tedious is all I can say. That paddock will need to be grazed & I don't have the energy to do that again within a week... will plan to put them in there in daylight, after drenching and on a weekday when I've got time to watch them and the vets are sitting twiddling their thumbs at the clinic just in case I call.

 

[jerry27150]

have heard of baling hay from someplace that has had too much chicken manure can be deadly to cows. i would venture a guess that it is too much nitrogen in the plants. you would have to ask your vet what you can do besides not using this grass

 

[regolith]

Well, the idea that the risk was confined to one paddock was a nice theory...
They bloated last night as well... unprotected though, I needed to put them on their new paddock earlier having denied them the half-paddock they bloated on, then drenched them at milking about three hours later, and again this morning just to be sure. The bloat oil only lasts twelve hours in the rumen.

297 the previous night:

815 standing next to her, just mild bloat... you can tell when you touch the skin over the left ribs because it feels like a drum.

 

[regolith]

Paddock 30, just grazed:

Paddock 29, this is the half paddock I took them out of two nights ago:

Paddock 33 pre-grazing:

the herd in 33

After two hours grazing in 33/31:

late night check:

Just more random things cows do to scare you... I went to move the dry cows last week and as soon as I got close I could see three of them. Hello, where's the heifer?? And then I saw a head and ears moving around somewhere down low. So at least I knew where-ever she was, she was on her feet and not stuck in mud.
Got closer and saw where she was. No, she was not supposed to have been swimming, or on that side of the electric fence.

Went to check them this morning - there's a lot of rough grass around the turnip paddock the main herd have finished. Well, I thought the milkers had gone back and pulled up every root they trampled into the mud while it was raining but when I saw the dry cows today that's what they were doing, out on the bare earth digging up pieces of turnip with their hooves and eating them.

A calf I'm looking forward to watching grow up. She's 3/4 Jersey 1/4 Holstein Friesian:

 

[regolith]

Just one thing to note... it isn't really possible to identify mild bloat in the dark by torchlight. Severe bloat you can see... so with those cows I brought to the shed the night before last, I knew 297 had bloat but couldn't see that any of the others were affected till I got them under the lights. Three of the other five had mild bloat at that stage.
btw I assessed 815's condition score because she was at the back of the row at milking tonight, and make her a 3.8 on the NZ dairy scale. I do know the girls have a lot of weight gain to achieve.

 

[angus9259]

I get mild bloat like that as well in the spring. Never lost a cow though. That's too bad for you. Maybe my time is coming?

 

[dun]

I get mild bloat like that as well in the spring. Never lost a cow though. That's too bad for you. Maybe my time is coming?

I don;t consider it bloat unless it's a problem. A couple of months every year all of our cows get like that and pretty much stay that way. I just consider a good rumen fill.

 

[cow pollinater]

All that clover is pretty fine stemmed for a milk cow. I have mild bloat on it from beef cows.
I also think I remember from somewhere way back in the back of my brain that some clovers in excess will produce estrogen like results and mess with your breeding program. Since the uterus and the stomach are both controlled by smooth muscle contraction I wouldn't be real surprised if that wasn't a problem.

 

[cypressfarms]

Granted, you are a world away, and it's the middle of summer there. Have you thought of killing the clover in the paddock that's causing so many problems? Losing three cows is a huge loss for anyone...

 

[dun]

All that clover is pretty fine stemmed for a milk cow. I have mild bloat on it from beef cows.
I also think I remember from somewhere way back in the back of my brain that some clovers in excess will produce estrogen like results and mess with your breeding program. Since the uterus and the stomach are both controlled by smooth muscle contraction I wouldn't be real surprised if that wasn't a problem.

I've only seen the estrogen deal mentioned in relationship to sheep

 

[regolith]

Granted, you are a world away, and it's the middle of summer there. Have you thought of killing the clover in the paddock that's causing so many problems? Losing three cows is a huge loss for anyone...

Haven't even considered it. If you were on an organic farm and not allowed to use any herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertiliser including nitrogens, what would you kill it with and why would you want to kill it?
Paddock 33 is one of the ones I undersowed with italian rye-grass in October. I've also planted 6 hectares turnips to 'break' the area from grass before re-sowing with some appropriate species, and expect those paddocks will have initially far less clover... whether they'll stay that way is any-one's guess, because insect damage is part of what has killed out a lot of the useful grasses and enabled the clover to take over (I'm guessing, still new to this farm).

I saw the eostrogen thing with clover mentioned in a dairying textbook I have, but it said sheep and maybe cattle. Anyway, unless my cows suddenly became infertile and started cycling madly on 8 December (when I stopped AI and put the bulls out), I don't think it's had any negative impact on the breeding this year.
I had a nice theory for what might have been going on with the bulls but the vet doesn't agree with me... which leaves me considering the posibility that two randomly selected, healthy, well-grown bulls were both sub-fertile (I thought if one was creating unviable pregnancies that the conception rate would finish up more or less where it did, whereas if one was fertile and the other simply didn't have swimmers the conception rate should have been normal.)
Oh yes, I need to go find that false heat thread again... had six cows checked today that I needed dates on. Four were holding to the later insemination. Two to the first... so the second heat that I inseminated them on was when they were about six weeks pregnant.

Dun, I like to see good rumen fill. Dairy cows are a different shape though, and to me that Jersey heifer in the dim light is a bit excessive. I've seen cows that bloated before and called it mild and not worried about it... it's just this farm has already thrown me dead cows, I need to be worried about it. It's really hard to tell the difference between a wellfed cow and mild bloat without actually touching the skin.

 

[alisonb]

Rego - Your animals are looking the best I've seen them(well from the pics anyway).

Are the animals going into pasture on empty stomachs? Have you considered feeding/supplementing dry hay before pasture feeding? Having grazing intervals? The pastures look great but it would seem you have double trouble there with the combination of rye and white clover with regards to pasture bloat. To top that they are high on nitrates + chicken litter and wet conditions. I bet the bloat preventatives are costing you a buck or two :shock: , have you tried Epsom Salts in their drinking water for nitrate poisoning? How's their Mg?

Good luck!

 

[regolith]

Rego - Your animals are looking the best I've seen them(well from the pics anyway).

Are the animals going into pasture on empty stomachs? Have you considered feeding/supplementing dry hay before pasture feeding? Having grazing intervals? The pastures look great but it would seem you have double trouble there with the combination of rye and white clover with regards to pasture bloat. To top that they are high on nitrates + chicken litter and wet conditions. I bet the bloat preventatives are costing you a buck or two , have you tried Epsom Salts in their drinking water for nitrate poisoning? How's their Mg?

Good luck!

No hay... I grew some, then grazed it to keep their stomachs full. I've been able to fully feed them on grass and turnips all this month (think I've finally got the peak stocking rate sussed at about 160 :cry2: ) so they shouldn't have had a hungry moment... going to a new paddock after milking is the biggest risk time and that's when I drench them with the bloat oil. PKE is coming this week so that'll help reduce that risk too... I'll offer it at the milking shed before they get their new paddock.
Mg is an interesting one. I think I'll scatter some on the PKE on the presumption that they're low. They blood-tested good in September but I keep a half-bucket of it at the exit and they'll go a while ignoring it, then go crazy for it for a few days. They knocked the bucket over a couple days ago so they probably want more.