Bull trying to die, any ideas?

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ledoux79

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I have a yearly bull that is not feeling well. I had the vet out and he run a tube down his throat and put something in his belly, about 2 gallons of it. It was not mineral oil, it was a little thinner than yogurt and oatmeal in color. The bull had a 102 temp and he also gave him banamine. I gave banamine yesterday and today. The bull has drank 1 gallon of water in 2 days and only poops a 1/2 cup at a time. The manure was originally yellow and pastey - yesterday it was tan and a little thinner and tonight it has a redish brown look with a seperate white dough portion of the manure. He is not eating at all. Prior to this he was eating long hay, prairie grass and whole kernel corn, 3 pounds a day.

What do you think? I called the vet yesterday and today and he tells me that banamine is the only thing we can do for him. He is not sure if the bull has an impaction but does not feel that he has a twisted gut because he is not thrashing.
 
We had a saying in the feedlot (edited for content): :secret:
You don't eat; you don't poop. You don't poop; you die.

Sorry about your bull. Sounds like the vet gave him a laxative? You could try removing his rumen contents and replacing them with the contents from a healthy rumen.
 
Sorry to hear about your trouble. It sounds like the vet may have tubed that stuff hoping to help the bull have a bowel movement. Is the bull moving around any, or just laying down? Is he urinating any? Does he look bloated? If it was possible, I would have thought the vet would have checked to make sure the bull did not have some type of impaction. I had a bull that had an impaction one time and acted very similar to what you are describing, and my vet had to glove up and break apart and remove the impaction. It was hard to believe how much stuff he got out of there. It could possibly be hardware too. If there is another vet around, you may want to check with them to see if they might take a look or have some other ideas. If he doesn't start eating and drinking, he will start to go down hill fast.
 
He lays around and will not get up unless he wants to. I had to put the dogs on him to get him up and he responded to the slowly at best. He appears full - which is odd once he is not eating. Bloated, no but full appearing. The part that seems odd is that he does poop but only a very small amount at a time. I did see him urinate last night but not today, I was not with him all day though. I have a pale in his pen for water so I know how much he is drinking. I had to seperate him from the other bulls because as soon as he started feeling poor, the other bulls started mounting him none stop.

I suppose if he is alive in the morning I will call a different vet and see if they have any ideas. I think I will double the banamine, in hopes that it gets him through the night.
 
Sounds like his guts are dead. Going to side with jillaroo on this one. Get new rumen contents into him. :cowboy:
 
jillaroo":j5zjyp3w said:
We had a saying in the feedlot (edited for content): :secret:
You don't eat; you don't poop. You don't poop; you die.

Sorry about your bull. Sounds like the vet gave him a laxative? You could try removing his rumen contents and replacing them with the contents from a healthy rumen.
Click to expand...
:?: :???:
 
Kingfisher":2949d4t7 said:
Aaron":2949d4t7 said:
Sounds like his guts are dead. Going to side with jillaroo on this one. Get new rumen contents into him. :cowboy:
Click to expand...
How do you do that? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Go to local abattoir and get contents of stomach from butchered animal. Strain out 'pulp'. Feed liquid into sick animal as a drench. :cowboy:
 
Life of rumen bacteria is only a few hours in the perfect environment of the rumen. Don't really know what it is once an animal is killed.
 
This morning found the bull spread eagle and still alive. I pulled his hind end up under him and called out the vet again. This time he come with a dextrose IV, 1/2 gallon mineral oil, electrolytes and I had already given him probiotic paste. As the vet left, he said if he dies he would like to cut him open and see what really went wrong and I agreed that it would be a good idea to know. As we stood at the vets pickup and talked the vet looked back in the barn and to his shock the bull was suddenly up. We tried to get him up, four people with various methods had tried but when we left the barn he stood up. He urinated for almost 2 full minutes. I checked him 5 hours later and he is still standing. His head is down, he does not offer to drink nor does he care to eat but still standing.

I don't know what to think at this point. The vet stated it was not a twisted gut as he would have been dead in 6-8 hours. If he had a blockage he would not be able to poop at all. He does poop but it is very little - 1/2 cup at the most. The vet is leaning towards hardware.

Oh and the small gelatin like portion of manure that I had seen come out of the bull was mucas from the gut. Apparently as the gut dies it will discharge it. I thought that was interesting. I guess we have done everything that could be done, we will see what happens from here. It would be a terrible way to die as I know he is in terrible pain.
 
It sounds like you've done about all that you can do for him. I know it's really frustrating when it's something like this and you work hard to help them and no one can really figure out what's wrong. If he doesn't show improvement soon, you may need to consider putting him down. I know that's a tough decision to make, but like you said that would be a terrible way to die and when they are suffering that's the best thing as an owner that we can do for them.
 
My grand pa had a cow that lost her rumen bacteria. She would eat but steadily lost weight . We went to the butcher and got the stomach of a fresh dead cow . Strained the contents and drenched the cow with it . In a week she looked like a different cow . Started gaining weight . The whole time I thought she had worms . But grand pa had given to many antibiotics for foot rot and killed her rumen bacteria
 
I found him dead this morning. We had the vet out to look things over and she is totally confused. She took some samples to send into the lab but she could not find any sure fire reason for his failing condition. The strange part about it all is that he looked great. He was in good shape and his eyes were bright last night. I could not get him up, we tried and we tried but we could not get him to his feet. This morning we had plans of pulling him out of the barn and lifting him with the tractor. It was too late he was gone. I will let you know what the lab says.
 

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