Lame yearling heifer, your thoughts please?

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Putangitangi

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A few days ago I found one of my yearling heifers sitting down looking pretty thin (I'd been restricted by an injury for a couple of weeks and the person checking the cattle hadn't noticed anything amiss). When she got up, she could hardly walk, but the pain obviously eased a bit as she went along. Got her down onto the flats and she put her head down and ate as though she'd not been doing so for days.

Her feet look weird to me, as if they've suddenly done an enormous growth spurt - I'd swear they didn't look like this three weeks ago! Formerly her hooves consisted of the black shiny bit - and her herd-mates still look like that.

feet4695.jpg


She walks sort of back on her heels. It appears that the surface makes little difference, she's no more sore on stones than she is on grass, so it's as though the pain is not caused at the surface of her hooves. She still spends a lot of time sitting down, but will also graze for more than an hour at a time.

I spoke to the local vet and asked him about Laminitis. He says he's never seen it in a beef heifer - they get nothing but grass and it's not the best pasture in the world, so it's unlikely to have been caused by too much of anything good.

She's one of my favorites, of course, and was on track for the mating draft this week. Not now.

My suspicion is that I missed seeing the worst of whatever has troubled her and that she's on the way up again, but I'm still pretty concerned about her. I'm encouraged by her enthusiasm for eating. All other vital signs are normal - temp, excreta, etc. The only other slightly odd thing is some little warty spots under her bottom lip. I don't know if they're related or not. There's not much likelihood of anything odd appearing in their paddock, and she is the only one affected.
 
I would have to have laminitis on top of my list. That is more than a couple of weeks growth there though. I would think more like 3 months so think back to 3 months ago what was she eating? Was she crook, needed any treatment?
Ken
 
No known dietary change at any time. They've been a healthy lot all the way through.

I look at feet a lot, which is why I'm doubtful they've looked this bad for long. But then time passes oddly at this time of year.
 
Putangitangi":1uvwov10 said:
She walks sort of back on her heels. It appears that the surface makes little difference, she's no more sore on stones than she is on grass, so it's as though the pain is not caused at the surface of her hooves. She still spends a lot of time sitting down, but will also graze for more than an hour at a time.
I spoke to the local vet and asked him about Laminitis. He says he's never seen it in a beef heifer - they get nothing but grass and it's not the best pasture in the world, so it's unlikely to have been caused by too much of anything good.

Beef cattle can flounder on grass or grass/clover mixes. I have usually seen it on lush spring stocker quality pasture.
I had a cow like that in June. We weaned Cleo's calf and then then she went on the truck.
 
thoughts?
Feet look poor for a yearling but I probably have one or two just as bad in the dairy herd, getting nothing but grass.
It's been a very good spring for both quantity and quality of grass production. I'd probably look at conformation issues before laminitis, but not rule it out.
But first of all, look for injury. There was an old saying, "even if you think a cow is lame in her head, look at the foot"
If she's stiff/lame on more than one foot sole bruising could be the issue. If she's walking back on her heels I'd look very closely at the toes - heifers and bulls are especially susceptible to toe abscesses compared to cows.

Depending on your experience level working on feet, what I'd probably do is check first for injury and if nothing obvious is discovered, trim the worst feet back to a correct walking surface (I've done a lot of this but I still sometimes get the vet to do any tricky ones) and if they grow out again mark her as a cow you're not going to keep replacements from.
 
the abrupt change in the surface of all four hooves indicates something probably nutrition related changed drastically months ago.....at least three or four months ago.....

that change may or may not be related to her current lameness....

in any event she does not have very good feet and from the photo I would say weak pasterns.....

this may be because she is sore in all four feet and standing funny to ease the pain.....

I will have to go back and read but do not recall you saying where she was sore..... as in which foot. I suspect all....
 
She's sore on all four, which is why an injury seems extremely unlikely, unless she walked across hot coals somewhere when I wasn't looking. She's been entirely healthy throughout the last few months, on heat regularly, nothing to indicate any illness. She's not had access to hard pathways, so stone bruising is unlikely. My gut feel is something systemic, but it must be something I don't know she had access to to eat, or some internal strife I didn't see any evidence of from outside.

Her feet look nasty now, but they were perfectly acceptable before this happened. Unless there's a miraculous recovery to her former glory, I'll sadly cull her from the herd.
 
I would have to say laminitis or Founder. By the looks of her feet, I would say that she had a major dietary change in the past 4-6 months, but I wouldn't expect that to cause her to be lame now. Is there any way she could have gotten into a bunch of grain or top quality grass/hay in the last couple weeks while you were laid up?

I might give her a bit of a chance, to me it looks like her feet are growing out and will be OK, but that will of course depend on whether her lameness goes away too.
 
Have a look from side on. Take a close photo of a foot from side on and show us. Is there an abrupt change in the angle of the hoof on the new stuff compared to the old more normal looking hoof suggesting rotation of the distal phalynx as occurs in laminitis? From what I can see in the photo it is suggestive of being the case but we are looking from close to head on.
It is the pressure of the distal phalynx on the sole that that causes the lameness months after the initial incident. Have a look at the sole and see if they have sagged and give them a squeeze with a pair of pinchers to assess how tender they are.
Ken
 
No chance of getting into anything odd, unless someone's growing something illegal up in the trees. I'll attempt some more photos - she's back out in the grass, so a bit more tricky to get good surface shots.

The puzzling thing for me is her completely individual response in a mob of 17 at the time which may be in question. We don't feed grain or any supplements. Spring was quite early and there was better-than-usual pasture growth, but if she's eaten something which didn't agree with her then, her response to it is unique in the herd. The only other thing different about her is a question over whether or not she got colostrum in sufficient quantity as early as she should have.
 
Putangitangi":1ng8u05o said:
No chance of getting into anything odd, unless someone's growing something illegal up in the trees. I'll attempt some more photos - she's back out in the grass, so a bit more tricky to get good surface shots.

The puzzling thing for me is her completely individual response in a mob of 17 at the time which may be in question. We don't feed grain or any supplements. Spring was quite early and there was better-than-usual pasture growth, but if she's eaten something which didn't agree with her then, her response to it is unique in the herd. The only other thing different about her is a question over whether or not she got colostrum in sufficient quantity as early as she should have.
Sometimes what you might consider a "wet diet" can lead to laminitis. Lush spring grass is often 85% or higher in moisture.
 
TexasBred":5d79eoxm said:
Putangitangi":5d79eoxm said:
No chance of getting into anything odd, unless someone's growing something illegal up in the trees. I'll attempt some more photos - she's back out in the grass, so a bit more tricky to get good surface shots.

The puzzling thing for me is her completely individual response in a mob of 17 at the time which may be in question. We don't feed grain or any supplements. Spring was quite early and there was better-than-usual pasture growth, but if she's eaten something which didn't agree with her then, her response to it is unique in the herd. The only other thing different about her is a question over whether or not she got colostrum in sufficient quantity as early as she should have.
Sometimes what you might consider a "wet diet" can lead to laminitis. Lush spring grass is often 85% or higher in moisture.

That wasn't the case this year, precipitation was too low through winter and early spring and the only time the grass really softened up was at the beginning of December when we had 3 - 4 inches at the end of a dry November. Putangitangi might have different weather conditions at the other end of the island, but probably not that different.

I had a look at the cow I was thinking of when I said I had some as bad... she's worse than yours actually, but I think she's the only one & she's a cow I was given that has always had problems. I trimmed both right feet a few months ago and now she's a little lame on the rear one and the toes are crossing as she walks, definitely needs trimmed back again. I was told she had always been a slow walker but her toes weren't long last year.
 
It can be metabolic, laminitis can be caused by a high fever (that you did not see), or vaccination. We had a cow that came up lame a month after vaccinations (and aborted) and was really lame for several months. I have pictured her here, when we put her on the table to trim her feet. She is fine now, had a great looking calf this year. But she still has a grove growing out of her hoof, and her toes were really ugly for a year. They grew like crazy... We would have shipped her, but she was lame and therefore could not go to the sale barn. I am now glad we kept her! She is nursing an October calf and we put an embryo in her that she stuck. Due in September...
 
After the heifer started grazing on her knees yesterday, I got the vet out to see her today. He put pain-detecting pincers on a hoof to see if he could find out where she hurt. As I suspected, there is no pain in her feet. She walks on any surface without discrimination and dislikes a stone under her foot only as much as any other animal. There's something much more general going on. She checks out as normal in every respect, but we've taken blood to see what might be detected. She's had a shot of Metacam to see if that eases her discomfort. If not, we're wondering if there's something neurological going on. So far, six hours on, there's little change.
 
Blood results came back showing nothing in particular, other than a bit of enzyme indicating slight muscle damage, which we've concluded is probably a result of far too much sitting around.

We had an unusually warm early spring, which may have led to more fungal growth of all sorts. I'm wondering if she ate something neuro-toxic and is still suffering that effect.
 
Putangitangi":39dbo8rj said:
Blood results came back showing nothing in particular, other than a bit of enzyme indicating slight muscle damage, which we've concluded is probably a result of far too much sitting around.

We had an unusually warm early spring, which may have led to more fungal growth of all sorts. I'm wondering if she ate something neuro-toxic and is still suffering that effect.

Do you get a lot of ryegrass staggers/FE where you are?
The rust has been showing through on the pasture this last three weeks, getting pretty bad. What surprises me is that it's appeared at its usual time of year, no earlier. I would have expected the warmer conditions to have created an earlier boost in fungal impacts, but it doesn't seem to have happened. [except in my garden - pulled some blighted tomatoes up yesterday]
I suspect the example given earlier of an un-noticed infection is the most likely trigger for the hoof growth. I wouldn't say laminitis never occurs in these conditions, but it's rare.
Neurotoxins are always a possibility and I doubt you'll ever identify them. I see spring eczema every year which I believe are caused by neurotoxins (not sure what the official view is at this stage) but all these years and no one knows what causes it and there's still no treatment. Had the vet out to see a cow who'd dried up (it was pneumonia, no typical symptoms, she didn't look sick) and she told me the spring eczema had been occurring in waves this year, not continual. I could name three of those times - early to mid October, early December, late December/early Jan - because that's when I was seeing it in my herd.
That late Dec/early Jan period I think my herd have taken a big hit to their immune function generally, not sure why and not sure if we're out of it yet.
 
I've not seen either staggers or FE here, presumably because of the dominant Kikuyu pasture.
I've been surprised that despite the early warmth in spring, most things have occurred at their usual time or even late. The blackberries are just ripening now and they're often a couple of weeks earlier than this.
 
The rust has been showing through on the pasture this last three weeks. other than a bit of enzyme indicating slight muscle damage.
 

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