Cow with bruising udder

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4luvofcattle

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6 year old beef Cow calved Sunday morning. Everything fine. She cleaned off the calf, but we could tell it hadn't nursed. So we got the cow in the chute and she had no milk in front two quarter. When I milked back two quarters, they were pure blood.

Never had issues with the cow before. So have her oxy to get milk to come in and stripped out all quarters and bottle feed calf with man made milk replacer. Front two quarters were good, but didn't want to give to calf, just in case.

Mastitis couldn't set in that fast and it is not like any mastitis I have seen before. Bag was not hot and felt soft, not hard.

Gave cow antibiotics and continued to strip quarters for 3 days. Milk is fine, but quarters are showing discoloration. Like it is bruising. Calf is now nursing on the bag and the cow seems fine, but the bruising concerns me.

I had a cow that had a bruised udder last year and ended up losing one of her quarters. Strangest thing how the bag bruised, cracked and festered.

Read something about gangrenous mastitis, but didn't know if that was only in dairy cows and if it would come on so fast.

Any ideas of treatment would be greatly appreciated!!
 
On occasion we will see bloody quarters on a fresh cow, some really red. It could have been bruised but sometimes there are just blood vessels that have ruptured. If the milk is looking okay now I wouldn't be too concerned. Someone might have butted her, she might have slipped and gone down hard on the udder. If it is not hot, or hard, or showing any mastitis it is not gangarene. I would say that either she was injured or something caused the vessels in the udder to jusr burst and that's where all the blood came from. Not much else you can do but what you did.
The one you had last year that you described sounds more like gangarene mastitis. Did part of the udder slough off? Some times they will just get a real bad staph or strep infection and it will cause mastitis that will eventually cause the quarter to dry up. The gangarene kind gets really disgusting looking and stinks, and it will actually separate and come off the udder. Any mammal can get it, not as common in beef as in dairy, but not real common in them either. I've seen 2 cases in 40 years.
 
The cow last year, it was gross and the quarter fell off. Any way that something left in soil or pasture could infect my cows this year or was it just a bad case of mastitis that went to the extreme.

Do I worry that the nipples are cracking and flaking on this cow?
 
What we call gangrene mastitis. Cow can die if it's bad enough but usually the quarter will rot out then heal over.
 
4luvofcattle":1qsq6cxc said:
The cow last year, it was gross and the quarter fell off. Any way that something left in soil or pasture could infect my cows this year or was it just a bad case of mastitis that went to the extreme.

Do I worry that the nipples are cracking and flaking on this cow?

Have never heard of a cow "catching" gangarene mastitis from an environmental thing like the pasture or soil. Not saying it can't but don't think it would. It usually is from mastitis from the inside.
If you are concerned with the teats on that cow with some cracking, usually caused by weather extremes, you can put a coating of something like bag balm or an udder creme on it a time or two. If she's not nursing a calf yet it will stay on for a few days as it is absorbed. One of my dairy farmers uses the people brand "AVEENO" hand creme. It is all natural, good stuff, and will absorb like any hand creme you use on yourself. I like it. None of the udder cremes with lanolin and stuff in it or even the aveeno will hurt the calf but they might not love it. Couldn't be any worse than a "pig" of a cow we had that used to wallow in a mud hole and then her calf had to suck that filthy udder. She is gone...
 

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