purecountry
Well-known member
Well, I was going to post this some time ago, but I thought I'd wait till we had a handle on things and a firm count on the death toll. We lost 7 calves in total to a strain of E.Coli scours that we finally discovered was living in a pothole of muddy water about the size of my desk. Some of the calves of course were drinking from it, and we went through more electrolytes in that week than we have in the last 10 years.
Kind of a heartbreaker to tube calves 3 times a day, morning and night AND on my lunch break from work, only to lose them in the end. It's a good thing we're only 5 miles out of town, and I've got a flexible boss-him and I grew up together.
We hit the first ones with Calf-Span boluses and electrolytes right off the bat, and when that didn't seem to help, I knew something was really wrong. The vet suggested 2 tablespoons of baking soda in the electrolytes to counteract the acidosis, and that helped us save 4 or 5 others, but it was just too late for some. Didn't help that they were in a quarter section of solid bush, and 30-35 degree temp's.
3 of them I didn't find until they'd been dead a few days. With tubing the others, there's only so many hours in the day to walk bush, and I think the wife and I covered every inch of that quarter before we found the last one. Funny thing was, the varmints were no help, because they wouldn't touch the carcasses. Coyotes, magpies and crows hadn't picked at 'em at all; just the flies and maggots.
On top of all that, we lost a 5 year old cow to pneumonia-on pasture yet. Vet said he'd seen at least a dozen cows with it this year in the heat and dust. So, all in all, with the 4 we lost out of first-calvers having trouble, and others and these, we lost 12 calves out of 73 cows. After losing 3 in the previous 3 years, this was a real kick in the Mommy-Daddy Button. But, if you're gonna have 'em, you're gonna lose a few. Not every year, but the averages say......
Kind of a heartbreaker to tube calves 3 times a day, morning and night AND on my lunch break from work, only to lose them in the end. It's a good thing we're only 5 miles out of town, and I've got a flexible boss-him and I grew up together.
We hit the first ones with Calf-Span boluses and electrolytes right off the bat, and when that didn't seem to help, I knew something was really wrong. The vet suggested 2 tablespoons of baking soda in the electrolytes to counteract the acidosis, and that helped us save 4 or 5 others, but it was just too late for some. Didn't help that they were in a quarter section of solid bush, and 30-35 degree temp's.
3 of them I didn't find until they'd been dead a few days. With tubing the others, there's only so many hours in the day to walk bush, and I think the wife and I covered every inch of that quarter before we found the last one. Funny thing was, the varmints were no help, because they wouldn't touch the carcasses. Coyotes, magpies and crows hadn't picked at 'em at all; just the flies and maggots.
On top of all that, we lost a 5 year old cow to pneumonia-on pasture yet. Vet said he'd seen at least a dozen cows with it this year in the heat and dust. So, all in all, with the 4 we lost out of first-calvers having trouble, and others and these, we lost 12 calves out of 73 cows. After losing 3 in the previous 3 years, this was a real kick in the Mommy-Daddy Button. But, if you're gonna have 'em, you're gonna lose a few. Not every year, but the averages say......
