Cystic suspect

[bigbluegrass]

Thank @JKCattle. I wasn't sure if that is what a cyst felt like or not. I was hoping someone would straighten me out! She is one of the hardest ones I have to breed. Not only is her cervix like a golf ball and hard to find the opening, but she also works on your arm the whole time and craps constantly. I will find out in a few weeks if she settled this last time. If she doesn't, she is gone by spring.

 

[Dsth]

a cyst would not have any affect on the shape of the cervix. I also have a cow that has a cervix that feels like a baseball and I also do all my own AI breeding. generally her cervix is open far enough to drive a truck through but the problem is making sure you are making the deposit in the right location. If you rebreed, take a little extra time to make sure you are in the right location.

 

[aaronstiff]

I know it's old, but I just wanted to finish the story of this thread.

Sometime in January the cow stopped going into heat. And so I just bit the bullet and kept her around another 9 months. Turns out she did eventually get bred and had a healthy heifer the beginning of November. To add to her list of problems, she had a slight vaginal prolapse a few weeks leading up to delivery, but as usual it went away after birth.

Her calf is probably inbred, and I guess there's a chance she could experience the same prolapse as her mother, but for now I might just keep her and her mother and just process all offspring after or something. Time will tell.

 

[farmerjan]

Hey, good to hear back from you. I think that this heifer is a problem, but since you just kept her and she had a healthy calf, with the little of problems you had.... the thing is to see what happens next. If she has any other problems, culling is the smartest thing you can do.... get rid of difficulties. I assume you are going to keep the heifer calf. See what she does. Try to breed her maybe AI to a completely unrelated line to get away from the possibility she is inbred. She may go on and just breed and calve like she should. If she has problems, be smart and get rid of the whole line since it is not something you are trying especially hard to get a calf out of.
How are the rest of your cattle doing?
How has your summer been? So many places have had droughts and problems getting hay for winter, some places have had recent severe rain and flooding. We made about 2/3 of normal first cutting, but still making some hay now since we had late rains. "Freeze dried" hay but it is curing up nice.

 

[aaronstiff]

Hey, good to hear back from you. I think that this heifer is a problem, but since you just kept her and she had a healthy calf, with the little of problems you had.... the thing is to see what happens next. If she has any other problems, culling is the smartest thing you can do.... get rid of difficulties. I assume you are going to keep the heifer calf. See what she does. Try to breed her maybe AI to a completely unrelated line to get away from the possibility she is inbred. She may go on and just breed and calve like she should. If she has problems, be smart and get rid of the whole line since it is not something you are trying especially hard to get a calf out of.
How are the rest of your cattle doing?
How has your summer been? So many places have had droughts and problems getting hay for winter, some places have had recent severe rain and flooding. We made about 2/3 of normal first cutting, but still making some hay now since we had late rains. "Freeze dried" hay but it is curing up nice.

Hey, thanks for the advice! Yes, I'm kind of done giving her any more chances, but we'll wait and see.

The rest of the cattle are doing great! Weaned calves a few weeks back, and now everyone is in winter paddocks for 7 months. Really the only problem I've had this year was one calf dying (it was around 5 months old oddly enough). I've had a few suggestions on why in this thread I posted, but it's still somewhat of a mystery to me. Sad, because it's the first one I've lost (I'm quite new to cattle obviously), but I guess this problem heifer replaced it for me.

Summer was actually really good compared to last year. Last year was the drought year, so this one was great in comparison. There has been some bizarre flooding in BC, and we're getting a big dump of rain right now here in PEI, but other than, couldn't have asked for better.

 

[faster horses]

I love 'the rest of the story' on these older threads.
Good luck with your heifer as a 3 year old. Thanks for the update.

And BTW, seeing PEI is on my bucket list. I may never make it there, but I would
sure like to!! You could post photos anytime, be nice to see your country.

 

[farmerjan]

Do you vaccinate for blackleg? That is where we will lose a calf "for no reason"...... usually in the 3-6 month range. We vaccinate for blackleg as it is cheap and easy to do when anything goes down the chute.
Glad you had an otherwise good year.

 

[aaronstiff]

Do you vaccinate for blackleg? That is where we will lose a calf "for no reason"...... usually in the 3-6 month range. We vaccinate for blackleg as it is cheap and easy to do when anything goes down the chute.
Glad you had an otherwise good year.

Nope, no vaccinations whatsoever.

 

[faster horses]

Nope, no vaccinations whatsoever.

I would heartily suggest you vaccinate for Blackleg if you don't care to vaccinate for anything else. It also helps prevent overeating.

 

[aaronstiff]

I would heartily suggest you vaccinate for Blackleg if you don't care to vaccinate for anything else. It also helps prevent overeating.

Interesting. Thanks! I'll look into.

 

[farmerjan]

I am not one to vaccinate them to death. But we lost 3 calves one year, seemingly healthy and then dead. Had the vet and it was blackleg. It is a cheap insurance to pop them with one shot. The calves will have some immunity from the cow for 6-8 weeks but then they seem to be susceptible for the next 6-8 months. We just decided that it was not worth the possible losses. We hadn't lost anything for years before that. We give the 5cc dose and then that's it. Sometimes we will boost all the cows on a preg check through the chute... but we also buy and trade some cattle so it helps to prevent problems.... We only use killed virus vaccines on the others and again, because we bring cattle in and want to try to protect our own and the new ones..... We buy a fair number of bull calves to castrate and then make groups of steers to sell as feeders and buy some breds or cow/calf pairs to supplement income and to utilize grass at different times of year or to take advantage of corn silage we have or something. So we have a reason to try to be a little more proactive on vaccines because of the intermingling. However, when we lost those calves all those years ago, it was on cows that had not had any other cattle in or out of them, just put out to pasture about 60 days prior to the loss.

 

[aaronstiff]

I am not one to vaccinate them to death. But we lost 3 calves one year, seemingly healthy and then dead. Had the vet and it was blackleg. It is a cheap insurance to pop them with one shot. The calves will have some immunity from the cow for 6-8 weeks but then they seem to be susceptible for the next 6-8 months. We just decided that it was not worth the possible losses. We hadn't lost anything for years before that. We give the 5cc dose and then that's it. Sometimes we will boost all the cows on a preg check through the chute... but we also buy and trade some cattle so it helps to prevent problems.... We only use killed virus vaccines on the others and again, because we bring cattle in and want to try to protect our own and the new ones..... We buy a fair number of bull calves to castrate and then make groups of steers to sell as feeders and buy some breds or cow/calf pairs to supplement income and to utilize grass at different times of year or to take advantage of corn silage we have or something. So we have a reason to try to be a little more proactive on vaccines because of the intermingling. However, when we lost those calves all those years ago, it was on cows that had not had any other cattle in or out of them, just put out to pasture about 60 days prior to the loss.

Yeah, neither am I. I'd like to avoid any really. Looking at the symptoms of blackleg though, I don't think that's what caused it. The corpse was bloated and had a prolapsed anus, but nothing else (none of the blistering like with blackleg). And it was really sudden. Aside from looking kind of fat the night before, it was acting normally, but I found it dead the next morning.

Strange because it had been on hay for at least a month and was off milk for a few weeks. Someone suggested pneumonia because of the recent weaning, but 3 weeks doesn't seem that recent...

 

[farmerjan]

Ours did not show the "obvious symptoms" of the crackly legs etc.... just dead. That is why we had the vet out. If there is no other vaccine given on our place, anything that comes home from the sales, and all calves when they go out to pasture, gets a blackleg shot.
Bloat could be caused by other stuff too, and it might not have been anything you could have avoided...

 

[Lucky_P]

I'm a veterinarian, but was always pretty much a 'minimalist' on vaccinations for my own herd - but we had a closed herd with no fenceline contact with other cattle, and the one neighbor with cattle also had a closed herd.
Blackleg on calves and Lepto on cows was about all we ever did... before my wife instituted some management and we started weaning and vaccinating weaners for respiratory diseases; didn't change the mature cowherd vaccinations other than incorporating a hardjo-bovis vaccine into the mix when Spirovax came on the market.
But... if you're gonna have cattle... you need to - at the bare minimum - vaccinate against the Clostridial species... otherwise, at some point, it's gonna BITE you! Lose one good calf to blackleg and you could have bought a lifetime supply of vaccine. You can give first dose any time after ~ 60 days of age, then booster 3-4 wks later, and they should be good to go.

 

[aaronstiff]

Thank you all for the advice!

 

[faster horses]

I don't think we ever boosted blackleg vaccine til in the fall.
I like the 5cc dosage.

On another note, we always used the killed vaccine on cows. Vira-shield 5 +VL5 back then and got along very well. Now I see they sell Vira-Shield 6 + VL5. The vets sure wanted us to use
modified live vaccine, but we never did. We used Vira-Shield way before it was an Elanco product.

 

[Silver]

We always used to boost blackleg with Ultrabac 7 or similar in the fall every 2 or 3 years. I have started to do it every year since I learned that immunity from this vaccine passes to the calves. This apparently helps with some scours so that helped sell me on it. And it’s cheap.

 

[Stocker Steve]

We always used to boost blackleg with Ultrabac 7 or similar in the fall every 2 or 3 years. I have started to do it every year since I learned that immunity from this vaccine passes to the calves. This apparently helps with some scours so that helped sell me on it. And it’s cheap.

Timing if key for unborn calves. Recommeneded within 60 days before calving.

 

[gcreekrch]

You could not have an ear and send away for BVD test. Carriers Do all sorts of funny things. Calf would have it too if that is the issue.

wbvs… Ken, what would you say about this possibility?

 

[kenny thomas]

You could not have an ear and send away for BVD test. Carriers Do all sorts of funny things. Calf would have it too if that is the issue.

wbvs… Ken, what would you say about this possibility?

You can do BVD-PI testing in your place..I do it all the time