Need some help on this one

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Brad B

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I posted about a week ago that I have a cow having the scours after deworming. That happened last Tuesday. I put out some hay as recommended by one of you. Last Friday I started noticing that 4 or 5 of the cows looked like they had lost a good bit of weight in the last few days, and a couple more were scouring. By yesterday every cow in the pasture (20) was scouring, and most looked to have dropped 100 lbs or so in the last week. The scours are really bad too, worst I've ever seen, but the weight loss seems to have happened just prior to the scouring, which really doesn't make sense. We called the vet first thing this morning to come take a look. By the time we got the cows pinned it was pretty obvious that they had a thin clear to white nasal discharge also. The vet got blood samples off the first four cows we ran through. They all had a temp of 102.5-104.4. He gave those all 4 Sulfa boluses, and a shot of antibiotics. He wanted us to give the rest of the cows boluses and a shot of CTC. Nobody in the county, including the vet, had enough Sulfa boluses to give them all, so we gave them the antibiotics and will have the boluses on Thursday. He didn't really speculate as to what the cows might have. I have never seen anything move through a cow herd like this, we very rarely even have one sick cow. We haven't brought any new animals on the place since last January. The farm where these cows are located is on the main road to the salebarn for most of the farmers, so I am wondering if it may have been picked up that way. Do any of you have any idea what they might have? We are leaving them in an acre pen where they will have very little access to grass. We are feeding hay, and also started them on Soy Hull pellets today, along with a Crystalyx barrel. Any help appreciated.
 
Brad B":zjz4qvm1 said:
The farm where these cows are located is on the main road to the salebarn for most of the farmers, so I am wondering if it may have been picked up that way.
I can't help you, Brad, but I'd forget about this as being a source. Need to figure out what it is before you start the epidemiology work. Hopefully, your vet will provide you some answers from the blood screen soon! Good luck!
 
I know that would be grasping at straws for it to come in that way. We have had cows on this farm for two years, and have not had any problems until a week ago. Only one new animal brought onto the place since then,and that was ten months ago. I have not got a clue, unless it's viral, and "blew in" where it would have come from. There are not any cows or goats on any of the adjoining farms. No deer around here either, so contact with other ruminants is non-existant.
 
I'm not trying to tell you what to do, Brad, but if you've got faith in your vet, now is the time to just try not to worry about it and let him do his job. I also realize that's easy for me to say. ;-)

If you don't have that kind of faith in him, your second opinions should come from another vet that can see the cattle. That kind of morbidity rate is too serious of a problem to be handled on a message board, in my opinion. Once again, good luck! Let us know what happens.
 
Yes, I agree it is a serious problem. The reason I posted it here was in hopes that someone might have even ever heard of something like this. I've been around cows for 25 years, and I haven't. The blood samples were to be sent off to our state lab (AL) today, so we will hopefully find out something by Friday.
 
Brad,

Have you ever used that dewormer before? When I first read of the cow getting scoury I automatically thought of the dewormer and the potency. Is there any chance at all that these cattle may have had eaten grass that had lots of egg larvae in it. Perhaps it was a good year for egg development. And the scours may have been the rapid exterminating effects of the dewormer getting the worms out of the body and took the cattle system for a rough change ride.

The temp of them isn't anything to raise concern about. Pretty close to the 103.

Not to scare the heck out of you :oops: , but I do know of a horse that died after getting dewormed. He had so much worms that the wormer cleaned him out and he bleed to death inside when the worms unlatched from the walls. It was to rapid of a process. And you would have never thought that this horse had worms. Healthy appearance on the outside and attentive attitude.
 
The wormer was Eprinex pour on. We've used it for several years with no problems. The farm where we have these cattle has never had any livestock on it. We dewormed the cows right before we hauled them to that farm. They could have had a bad worm problem, but the pastures should have been pretty worm free, I would think. Thanks for the idea, I hope more folks put there two cents in. I need ideas. I do think that the deworming could have been the catalyst for this, the timing is too coincidental.
 
Was the blood that the vet pulled dark red? Or clearish like water?
 
is Johnes a possibility? There is no vaccine for it that I am aware of, and the cattle can have it for a while bfore they have symptoms. Good luck, and keep us posted!
 
Brad --- FWIW, I had something similar happen a few years ago and it was in late September after an extended period of very wet weather. I had not been to the place in a few weeks due to the demands of my "real" job, but when I did get there to check the cows I saw that a good number looked like they had lost a LOT of weight and there were soupy looking turd splatters all over the place. I did a little reading and was soon convinced that they had one of several problems that present themselves as diarrhea, rapid weight loss, etc. so I called my vet and asked him to come and take some blood samples. He apparently had recently seen quite a few similar cases and he told me just to worm them very well with either IvomecPlus or Valbazen because his bet was that they had a worm overload and were particularly being affected by liver flukes (given my location). At the time I took fairly small comfort in his advise and was certainly willing to pay for blood work since the problem seemed to be so severe. Anyway, I shot them up with a little extra dose of IvomecPlus. It knocked a few of them on their butt for a few days but clearly it worked. Soon thereafter the diarrhea was gone and they started to gain back the weight and got back to as good as new. If you are in southern Alabama I'd bet you are in liver fluke country, and also the wet conditions in the last month or so have been ripe for other worms/parasites --- something to consider. Note that Safeguard, Eprinex, etc. won't do a thing to flukes --- it has to be IvomecPlus or Valbazen (I think "coursolon" is something else that will work but I never see it sold as such in the stores I frequent)
 
Arnold Ziffle":3relxl9c said:
Brad --- FWIW, I had something similar happen a few years ago and it was in late September after an extended period of very wet weather. I had not been to the place in a few weeks due to the demands of my "real" job, but when I did get there to check the cows I saw that a good number looked like they had lost a LOT of weight and there were soupy looking turd splatters all over the place. I did a little reading and was soon convinced that they had one of several problems that present themselves as diarrhea, rapid weight loss, etc. so I called my vet and asked him to come and take some blood samples. He apparently had recently seen quite a few similar cases and he told me just to worm them very well with either IvomecPlus or Valbazen because his bet was that they had a worm overload and were particularly being affected by liver flukes (given my location). At the time I took fairly small comfort in his advise and was certainly willing to pay for blood work since the problem seemed to be so severe. Anyway, I shot them up with a little extra dose of IvomecPlus. It knocked a few of them on their butt for a few days but clearly it worked. Soon thereafter the diarrhea was gone and they started to gain back the weight and got back to as good as new. If you are in southern Alabama I'd bet you are in liver fluke country, and also the wet conditions in the last month or so have been ripe for other worms/parasites --- something to consider. Note that Safeguard, Eprinex, etc. won't do a thing to flukes --- it has to be IvomecPlus or Valbazen (I think "coursolon" is something else that will work but I never see it sold as such in the stores I frequent)


great post arnold..

just be aware that valbazen will abort early pregnancies.. the bottle says 45 days or less.

jt
 
I agree with Arnold Ziffle. The worming should kick in and they will begin to put on some weight. The Johnes thing doesn't seem likely with the whole herd all coming up with the same symptoms although I guess it could happen. Good luck with the cows-they should be fine.
 
The blood was dark red. The cows were vaccinated within the last 12-14 months. I'm in North AL, but Liver Flukes could be the culprit. It has certainly been a wet summer here. We had a real dry spring and once June got here it has rained bucket fulls at the time, as it is doing right now. Up until this past week, we hadn't had any rain for the past 3 weeks, since Hurricane Ivan passed through the area. Wonder if the dry weather might have triggered something. Thanks for all your advice.
 
Still don't know what it is for sure, but I talked with the vet at our local state extension lab today. She said that there have been a couple cows brought in by different folks, with the same symptoms, and the local salebarn has also submitted some fecal samples too, from cattle with the same symptoms. Sounds like somethings going around to me. Went out to feed a while ago, and some of the cows are starting to look a little better...maybe. The scours seem to be subsiding in at least two of them, so hopefully we've turned the corner.
 
Just did some research on Johnes disease. We are experiencing some of the same symptoms, but on the other hand, are not experiencing some of the others, which could be true of many infectious diseases. It seems that the Johnes disease is most times picked up at or shortly after birth from the infected animals in the herd. Other than three herd sires, and 5 X bred heifer calves bought 3 years ago, we have a "closed" herd. If this was Johnes disease, then we should see symptoms on the farm where all these animals were raised, and we don't. The home farm where these cows came from is 10 miles from this one. Thanks for the heads up though.
 
Brad,

I doubt it's Johnes.. you wouldn't have a bunch of cows at one time coming up with symptoms. Classically they begin to show symptoms after stress.. ie: weaning a calf, calving, moving, etc, and not a whole group at one time.. generally one or two at a time, over a long period of time.

I would suspect some sort of air born pathogen.. a pnuemonia or some such. Obviously something your cows don't have an immunity for. We had something similar go through our herd years ago. Just one of those freaky things that makes you wonder what you were thinking when you decided to raise cattle.

Hopefully they'll all get over it soon. good luck
 
Bull Lady, you read my mind. Yesterday when we were out there giving the shots, in the cold rain, we were wondering just exactly why it was we liked farming so much. :lol:
 

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