first time Johnes

[angus9259]

Well, looks like there's a first for everything. A 2 1/2 year old cow wasting away, the runs, ragedy coat . . . called the vet . . . she's going to call me tomorrow am I guess. I undertand it's bacterial and that it's usually picked up as a calf and stays dormant till the cows 2-3 years old, but what about treatment? Prevention - other than calving in clean areas which I do anyway to prevent scours? Helpful websites?

From the Merck manual . . . maybe I don't know what I have . . .

Chronic diarrhea with unthriftiness and wasting, seen as a sporadic disease, most commonly is associated with paratuberculosis ( Paratuberculosis: Introduction) but also may be caused by chronic salmonellosis and chronic BVD infections. Diarrhea with wasting also may be seen in cattle with congestive heart failure, uremia, or chronic peritonitis. Persistent diarrhea with unthriftiness, and occasionally wasting in yearling and mature cattle, can be associated with a secondary copper deficiency due to excess molybdenum in the pastures. Diarrhea may also accompany selenium-responsive ill-thrift syndromes in growing cattle.

 

[milkmaid]

Check http://www.johnes.org ...it'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

If it is Johnes, she probably picked it up from her dam (fecal-oral is just one way of transmission, by milk or across the placenta can also be causes) and probably infected her calf as well.

 

[greatgerts]

I'll try and look up some websites. We had our first scare of Johnes in 1998. There is no treatment for it. We kept everything off of that area for about a year. Took a lot of $ to hay the cows for that long, because it was before we started a rotational grazing program. We tested every animal, every year, and also tested all new cattle brought into the farm. Check with your vet to see if there is funding to help with becoming a certified Johnes free herd. It will REALLY help in the long run. A lot of places don't have requirements to test for Johnes to sell, but it is a nice thing to tell potential buyers, because there may be another breeder at the sale that someone else has bought that ended up having Johnes. I know from experience!

 

[bigbull338]

you can test that cow for johns.an if she tests pos cull her.an then test all your cows an heifers.an cull any pos or carrier cows from those.since your beef man any pos cows or carriers can transfer it to their calves.the only cure is strict hard culling.

 

[hillsdown]

Well, looks like there's a first for everything. A 2 1/2 year old cow wasting away, the runs, ragedy coat . . . called the vet . . . she's going to call me tomorrow am I guess. I undertand it's bacterial and that it's usually picked up as a calf and stays dormant till the cows 2-3 years old, but what about treatment? Prevention - other than calving in clean areas which I do anyway to prevent scours? Helpful websites?

From the Merck manual . . . maybe I don't know what I have . . .

Chronic diarrhea with unthriftiness and wasting, seen as a sporadic disease, most commonly is associated with paratuberculosis ( Paratuberculosis: Introduction) but also may be caused by chronic salmonellosis and chronic BVD infections. Diarrhea with wasting also may be seen in cattle with congestive heart failure, uremia, or chronic peritonitis. Persistent diarrhea with unthriftiness, and occasionally wasting in yearling and mature cattle, can be associated with a secondary copper deficiency due to excess molybdenum in the pastures. Diarrhea may also accompany selenium-responsive ill-thrift syndromes in growing cattle.

Although not unheard of that is young to show symptoms as deteriorated as this, sounds more like bvd. Get a fecal done and if it is Johne"s go to the website Milkmaid gave you, it is excellent and tells you what to do now that you have a Johnes positive herd..It takes a lot of effort and it will cost you money but eradicating it from your herd is very, very important.

Good luck and keep us posted, I hope it is not Johnes.

 

[Katie]

This year we had one that was a little over 2 showing all the signs she tested positive we culled her and her calf. Tested the rest of the herd another one same age we had got from the same breeder also tested positive she was not showing any signs so we culled her and her calf as well. I purchased these and 2 more from a breeder at weaning so I contacted him to let him know and he had problems with the dam of the first one showing all the signs of Johnes about a year after I purchased them. We will continue to test yearly. The website www.johnes.org was a big help for us.

 

[hillsdown]

Katie, I remember your case. It was one of the first that I had read about showing definitive symptoms at such a young age. I hope this doesn't mean that the disease is becoming more aggressive or "mutating" in some way with this other new one popping up.
I think we are missing a lot of useful information as the livestock industry still continues to SSS or cull and put on blinders without reporting it.

 

[Katie]

Hillsdown,
I agree with you on the people selling without letting people know. When I say cull I mean we put the one that was in bad shape and the calves down and the other one was a 1100 lbs the vet said she was safe to eat since you don't eat the part that has the bacteria.

 

[angus9259]

Hillsdown,
I agree with you on the people selling without letting people know. When I say cull I mean we put the one that was in bad shape and the calves down and the other one was a 1100 lbs the vet said she was safe to eat since you don't eat the part that has the bacteria.

Why not send the calves to feedlot since the symptoms don't show up for years if at all? They'll be dead by then and very unlikely to pass on to anything else.

 

[angus9259]

Although not unheard of that is young to show symptoms as deteriorated as this, sounds more like bvd.

I hope it is BVD. The thing leading me to believe it's Johnes is she keeps eating and is acting fine . . . bright eyed and bushy tailed as they say. She gets treated every year with injectible ivomec (just treated again in Oct). It does seem to have set on quickly however . . . more quickly then it seems Johnes is known to do.

I'll hopefully be taking a fecal to the vet tomorrow.

 

[Katie]

Angus,
These were young calves about 4 months old and when we found out what we had we just decided to get rid of them as soon as possible. We felt like that was the best thing for us to do at the time. I would rather take care of the situation myself and know that there is no way anyone else's animals were exposed. The symptoms on the one we we had came on fairly quickly. She was due to calve in May and she started looking wormy and rough in about April. We took her to the vet in May and she was wormy so he wormed her and we wormed her once or twice more because she continued to look bad we took her back to the vet in August and he tested for Johnes and she was positive she had deteriated from a Body score of about 7 to about a 1 or 2 by that time with me supplementing about 15 lbs of feed a day. She also stopped producing milk for the calf.

 

[Beefy]

baxter, you and your friend from tennessee must have co-owned that cow. seems like i remember him telling that story a time or two, at least.

 

[cfpinz]

baxter, you and your friend from tennessee must have co-owned that cow. seems like i remember him telling that story a time or two, at least.

What a coinkydink!

 

[Brandonm22]

I think we are missing a lot of useful information as the livestock industry still continues to SSS or cull and put on blinders without reporting it.

I think most of us, don't look too hard at one case of anything. A cow turns up unthrifty compared to her peers and we ship her. If a cow has back to back calves that we treat for scours and we ship her. A cow turns up lame and we ship her. A cow turns up with some scrawny undersized piece of crap at weaning and we ship her. A cow has a stillborn we ship her. A cow turns up open we ship her. There COULD be lots of nasty things happening in these circumstances and most of us are too tight too call out a vet for a bunch of bloodwork. I certainly fall into the camp of probably not being aggressive enough.

 

[angus9259]

Fecal was negative for parasites.

Blood draw went off the in the mail today.

 

[TheBullLady]

Yes, Johnes is a nasty disease and still very much unheard of for many producers. As stated.. many times a producer will see a cow that is unthrifty and ship her, without thinking about how it could be affecting his entire herd. When we moved here from Illinois, where it is pretty widespread because of all the dairies, it surprised me how many folks in Texas had never heard of it.

It isn't unusual for a cow that age to show symptoms.. keep in mind that usually a stressful situation will bring on the symptoms.. ie: weaning a calf, or having a calf. They can also not show signs until much older.. we had one years ago that was 8.

It is harder to get rid of if you have a lot of cattle in a small space.. like a feed yard or lot, because the cows get contaminated from the fecal material of a carrier. If you have a lot of pasture and plenty of room, it's not as invasive because the chances of a non-carrier laying down in an infected "pile" is much smaller. The hardest part is that it can take years to actually get rid of it.. and you may think it's gone, only to have it pop up again.

 

[angus9259]

If it comes back positive for Johnes my vet is going to pursue testing the whole herd and getting me certified as a Johnes free herd. She thinks the state will pick up a good chunk of the costs and as long as everyone has to be tested anyway, might as well get the marketing advantage out of it . . . her thoughts but sounds right to me

 

[Stocker Steve]

MN had a state sponsored Johnes testing program. I think the $ are going for TB testing now.

My vet said 30% of the beef herds tested in this area had positives. I had not idea it was so wide spread.

 

[CKC1586]

Good article here:

http://www.drovers.com/news_editorial.a ... ed_id=5010