Frozen Teat?

[LisaW]

We have had a cold snap here in the northwest and I think that one of our cows has suffered prety bad from it. I'd like to explain what I see in her and see if anyone has any suggestions.

Here in the Pac. NW we have a milder winter than other places, but the end of November was mighty cold: wind chill took us to -35* and air temp was in the single digits for a few days. We also had 2 feet of snow to go along with this. Our animals are not used to this and not for 10 days at a time (maybe one day, but that's about it). We used to have a barn (the weather has been wild this season already), but now they only have the wooded area for shelter.

The cows, all herefords, would only come out of the wooded area they stay in to eat and find water then they'd head back to the woods. So it wasn't until last night that our daughter noticed that something is wrong with one of our cows.

Her nose seems to be "chapped" and the top layer of skin is peeling off. It looks bad, but I think that's because their skin is so thick and yellowish anyway. It looks like she's been rubbing her nose on trees or whatever she can because she has a lot of abrasions on her lip and around her nose with some small patches of skin removed. The skin below looks healthy, as much as I can tell. I applies bag balm to her nose this afternoon, as best as I could.

My bigger concern is her teats. The front teats are red and engorged (she has a late-spring calf on her still and it looks like today it didn't suck at all, she's somewhat engorged in the teats but not too much). The back teats are my primary concern. One is mottled white and pinkish/white. It looks like very dry skin and as if there's a white cream on it - there isn't. The other teat looks white and black. I keep telling myself that it might be mud on some red skin (our mud is dark in the woods) but I think it's really black.

I got her in the coral today to take a better look. I cannot access her teats while she's in the head gate, I'm going to ask my husband to remove the lower panel when he gets home so we can look better tomorrow in the daylight. But for now, I cannot get a very close look or put anything on her.

We fed her some of the horse hay and she perked up (she was rather droopy when we got her in, we left her in for about an hour) and then I fed a new bale of silage after I let her out. I plan to coral her again tomorrow and feed her a little extra again, trying to keep up her calories and nutrition. She is bred.

My questions are this:
Has anyone had a similar situation? If so, what did you do and how did it turn out? Any suggestions?

Can anyone recommend other things to look for in her? I do plan to call the vet tomorrow and I know he'll want to see her in order to give me a clearer idea of what is going on. I'd like to have all the info I can before he gets here so he doesn't have to stay too long ($).

None of the other dozen cows show any similar signs. In fact, they all look great and are thrilled that the snow is starting to melt in places.

Thanks a bunch!
Lisa

 

[Beefy]

i had a cow get gangrenous teats one time and they turned blueish first, then black. not cold related though.

to me it sounds like maybe the nose and teats are mostly suffering from sunburn from the sun reflecting off of the snow. keep in mind i rarely see snow so this is all stuff i've heard, not seen. but herefords particularly and any pink skinned animal is more susceptible to sunburn. if the teat that is black is in fact black then it could very well be frost bite. i would keep applying bag balm..

 

[randiliana]

The nose to me sounds like she had a fever and is now over it and it is peeling. As for the teats, it is possible that it could be frostbite. We have a cow that froze one teat and part of another. Her calf got sick and by the time we realized what was going on it was too late for the cow. It was a cold snap too, but just shortly after she calved. If it is frostbite, there really isn't much you can do about it. It will dry up and fall off. She can still milk off 3 quarters sufficiently to raise a good calf. Ours raised a 600 lb calf in about 6 months.

However, as Beefy already suggested sunburn is another possibility. But when you say the teat is black I would lean more towards frostbite. It wouldn't hurt to have the vet look at it, then you would know for sure what you are dealing with.

Another thought just occurred to me is that it could be photosynthesis disease. Usually this occurs when a cow eats something (and I haven't been able to find out what plant/plants) that causes it to have an allergic reaction to the sun. It isn't fatal, but at the very least it will cause the exposed skin to peel and/or any areas with underlying pink skin. At it's worst the cow will lose large areas of hair and skin. It looks like a VERY bad sunburn. Some will never get all the hair back, and some recover to the point that you cannot tell she ever had a problem.

We have had 2 in the last 3 years. 1 acted as though she wanted to die. It wasn't as serious as that, but she felt really badly. Her nose, udder and vulva all turned black until the outer layer of skin peeled off. Amazingly she let her calf continue sucking. She also lost patches of skin where there was pigmented hair. We had the vet out and he gave her antihistimines and some other drugs which I cannot recall, and told us to keep her out of the sun for about a week. She recovered but was dry in the fall, she was going on 10 years old. The second cow was almost as bad as the first, the bare skin all turned black and peeled and she lost some hair/skin on her face which was white. But she recovered without drugs, and is still in the herd. We also had a palimino tobiano mare get the same thing. I was trying to sell her, and the morning we were to show her to some people all her skin was blistered under her white patches. Needless to say they didn't buy her. She was fine in the end though.

 

[LisaW]

*Update and conclusion and thanks!*

I called a vet to come out today and by morning she looked a lot better. The skin on her nose all peeled off and the skin under it is as healthy looking as can be (and clean - looks great on a dirty old cow).

Her teats look better, not black and pasty white. I decided to have the vet out anyway to give me his assessment because by this time I had figured it was tansy ragwort in the silage hay. Thank you for the suggestion of the photosynthysis disease. That sparked a few memories of things I had read in the past and got us going in the right direction.

He confirmed our conclusion (and said at first sight and with a healthy nose he also thought it could be weather related, that made me feel better LOL) and told us to watch for liver failure symptoms but didn't think that she has had enough to cause total liver failure. Her vitals were normal (temp, resp, general appearance, etc) calf fetus should be okay, unless she got a bit of it then she'll abort. This years calf is obviously weaned by now, there is no way anything is touching those teats! However we did get some bag balm on them after we peeled off some of the skin to check the general health of the teat/skin - it looks like healthy skin under that nasty peeling off stuff.

So - there we have it. I thought I'd wrap up the thread with the outcome. Thanks for the suggestions and helping me get my brain on the right track with this. Much appreciated!

 

[BlackBaldyMan]

Yeah she got pretty cold, cattle started eating like crazy though which is good for the feedlot end of er', glad you got it figured out

 

[milkmaid]

I'd been wondering if beef cows ever got frostbitten teats! It's relatively common among the dairy cows (especially fresh heifers right after their first calf) where I come from, and is responsible for the majority of new mastitis cases during the winter months.

You can put bag balm on it... but in the process don't peel off any scabs on the ends of the teats. If she's not a heavy milker, you'd be best off to wean the calf so the teats can heal. (Edit, just noticed that you did that.) I've never seen them so badly frostbitten that the entire teat fell off -- but I've seen them frozen about half way up and the cow usually gets mastitis, and due to the damaged end of the teat, it's not something we can treat (and cure) and so she ends up losing the quarter and the cow eventually gets culled.