Lost a healthy 2 month old calf.

[msscamp]

My guess would be blackleg. That should always be a serious consideration when you find one of your best calves dead for no apparent reason. I lost a five week old calf about a month ago. The youngest and the earliest I can ever remember losing one to blackleg.

This one was obviously blackleg before I ever got up very close to her. She almost looked double-muscled in the hip that was facing up.

Ok, I don't understand something - assuming it was blackleg - why would one lose only ONE calf? I have no personal experience with blackleg, but my understanding of the disease that it's highly communicable - is this not true? Or is it more a matter of the vaccination not taking or possibly the calf became infected prior to being vaccinated? :help: :help:

 

[Beefy]

over the years we've lost several calves to blackleg and its always right before we are planning to vaccinate them for it. we have never (knock on wood) lost more than one within a year. it is supposed to be highly communicable though.

 

[msscamp]

Thank you, Beefy!

 

[Beefy]

i need to clarify b/c communicable was a very poor maybe ambiguous choice of wording. a lot of times with blackleg there will be an outbreak so it is highly communicable in teh sense of a lot of them getting it at one time but the cattle dont get it directly from each other. they ingest it. having said that ive never seen multiple animals infected. just wanted to clarify that communicable did not mean contagious. but you probably know that.

 

[msscamp]

i need to clarify b/c communicable was a very poor maybe ambiguous choice of wording. a lot of times with blackleg there will be an outbreak so it is highly communicable in teh sense of a lot of them getting it at one time but the cattle dont get it directly from each other. they ingest it. having said that ive never seen multiple animals infected. just wanted to clarify that communicable did not mean contagious. but you probably know that.

Thanks for the clarification, and I did know that blackleg is not a virus. I just didn't understand how, with multiple animals running in the same area, only one animal could contract the disease. Your explanation helped me understand that.

 

[klingoncowboy4]

My understanding is that no one really knows much about it (other then the fact that it is like Botox). Penecilan helps infected cows sometimes and the vaccines may or may not help. Though something I observed is that the only two cases I know personally (my own and one year with my Gido) is that it seems to happen when they drink a lot of puddle water that has been sitting for awhile (e.g. during a wet year). Don't know if it is how they get it or just coinsedense.

As for the battery case. That has got to be a nasty way to go. I had to clean up some of bush/pasture by the highway because that calves were eating garbage that blew in from the ditch. That was a few weeks ago so if it caused any problems it should show up.... stil they don't get into harmful things like 8 puppies do.