New mother with diarreha

[Corky]

Help,

we have an older Brangus cow who calved approx 4 days ago. calf is doing alright other than a prize-winning case of contracted tendons on the rear legs which seems to be improving daily, but the cow has had diarrhea for the last couple of days. This afternoon I watched her and she is just pouring out a stream of colored water basically.

I am guessing she is 6-8 yrs old. We have her on our place as a favor to an older neighbor gentleman who bought her as a light bred (2+ months) cow from a local cattle buyer.

Just hoping someone will tell me to stop thinking Johne's disease and that it may just something else associated with her recent calving. We are only running about 35 head right now, but have spent the last couple of years trying to get our bloodlines set up how we want them & I am panicking at the thought of all that time and effort being wasted if I have accidentally exposed the whole herd to Johne's over the last 5 months this cow has been in our pastures.

Corky

 

[milkmaid]

It's not neccessarily Johnes just because the cow has diarrhea... even though that is the first thing that comes to people's minds. There are three assumptions you can make with the cow in question... 1) she's not absorbing fluids or feed, 2) her rumen is not working, and 3) if you don't get her stopped up soon, her rumen may quit working like it's supposed to and you may not be able to get it "started" again.

Get a temp on her, see if she's running a fever. A uterine or systemic infection will often cause diarrhea. If she's on grain or a rich alfalfa diet, you may want to consider putting her on stemmy, coarse hay to try to stimulate her rumen. Probiotics would be a good idea too.

 

[hillsdown]

Everything that MM said plus a PH balancer like Kaopectate.Try all before panicking.Separation of cow and calf from the herd is always a good thing though.Good luck and keep us all posted.

 

[Corky]

Thanks guys,

Was starting to get squirrelly and build my own set of blinders for a minute.

We separated momma & baby out from everyone except one other old cow that she always buddies around with the day we first noticed she was acting differently. I noticed she was still expelling some afterbirth 2 days after the baby arrived so she may have retained part of the placenta or something. I'll get her in the chute this morning, check her temp, and hit her with a dose of LA200 if she's hot. Guess I need to talk to the vet about lutylase (sp?) to see if he thinks I should give her some just to make sure everything that was supposed to work its way out has.

Corky

 

[milkmaid]

I prefer high doses of Penn for uterine infections... LA200 just hasn't seemed to work as well for me. 30-35cc of Twin Penn would be best.

Lutalyse would be a good idea too if a uterine infection is the cause. You can give it every 12 hours for 3x, and that will clean out most cows.

hillsdown - I don't think Kaopec is a pH balancer. As far as I know, the only action of Kaopec is absorption of toxins. It's similar to using activated charcoal. One could use sodium bicarbonate to raise the pH though (diarrhea always results in an acidic state -acidosis- to some degree), and kaopec to help absorb toxins caused by the 'bad' bacteria in the rumen.

 

[Corky]

Thanks for the input guys.

MM, 35 cc's of twin pen it is. Talked to our vet this morning and he also seemed to feel that we are probably looking at a case of utrine infection due to possible retention of the placenta. He also suggested penn instead of the LA200 (good call MM). Guess I'll be headed to the vet's office for the penn & lutalyse here shortly. He also said that dosing her with the kaopec would certainly be a good idea to slow the spread of the bad bacteria in her rumen.

btw, checked her temp first thing and she is a little warm, but not dangerously so as of yet. Thanks to you guys, I think we may actually get this one better without running up a high enough vet bill to where my neighbor ends up in the red on her.

Thanks you guys.

Corky