Pneumonia question

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KNERSIE

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In our climate we typically don't get alot of pneumonia problems so I'm no expert and I doubt the typical vet here is either.

I have a month old calf that had very rough noisy breathing and coughing after a recently cold and wet spell. At the time the calf wasn't suckling, but was still eating grass. I have given Advocin (equivalent to your Baytril) for 5 days on the vet's recommendation. The calf started nursing again after one treatment and is very lively and always have been even when not nursing. The vet didn't want me to give any anti inflammatory because he felt that he didn't want to do anything that supresses the calf's immune response, but on the advice of a good friend on CT I have given a single dose of Predef (steroidal anti inflammatory) and the breathing improved dramatically.

Now that the course of antibiotics are done the calf acts 100% normal except that the breathing is still noisy although not really laboured. The vet thinks the 5 days of Advocin would be sufficient and that the calf's immune system would do the rest, but I am not convinced. Any suggestions or experiences from those of you in the cold climate that I am sure deal with more pneumonia a year than we see in 20 years?
 
Randi, its certainly a possibility, but it had all the signs of pneumonia as well. After a quick look at the Merck manual I think I should go with a few more days of Predef?
 
I would continue with predef as well and you can even give it every second day for a few days if you wish ,it might be less evasive. I have never had problems with predef I have with banamine though.

If she does not respond like you want you can always do another course of antibiotics maybe even switch to draxxin or exceed.

Randi, if it was diphtheria wouldn't she have other symptoms like sores in the mouth ? Thankfully I have no first hand experience with it.
 
Keren, I don't know what makes your vet think that this one month old calves immune system is good enough to take over when it wasn't good enough to keep him from getting sick in the first place. If he is still noisy when he breathes, he needs to be treated more. I'm with hillsdown on the Draxxin and the predef. In calves this age we use Bovi-Shield 5 Gold and are able to improve the immune response of calves to the point that we don't have many respiratory cases.

Larry
 
larryshoat":aqlkwe3d said:
Keren, I don't know what makes your vet think that this one month old calves immune system is good enough to take over when it wasn't good enough to keep him from getting sick in the first place. If he is still noisy when he breathes, he needs to be treated more. I'm with hillsdown on the Draxxin and the predef. In calves this age we use Bovi-Shield 5 Gold and are able to improve the immune response of calves to the point that we don't have many respiratory cases.

Larry

hee hee, brain fart Larry?
 
All I know about pneumonia is that it's a tough one to get control of - has a nasty habit of the calf appearing to recover then relapsing later, and sometimes doesn't show a lot of symptoms (I got so fed up of looking at a calf with a dull coat last spring that I gave her a couple of doses penicillin - didn't seem to do any good so I stopped after the basic 3-days (pneumonia is 5 - 7 day treatment). It was a couple weeks later that she'd been running around the pen and I finally heard the harsh breathing, started her on the full five days at a slightly higher rate and this time saw considerable improvement. She'd probably had respiratory issues since around a week old, causing the initial poor growth and coat).

I don't know your drugs, but I'm usually advised to treat for 5-7 days to get on top of pneumonia (with penicillin or oxytetracycline). Either this calf needs further treatment or there is residual lung damage. Residual lung damage can be bad news - might improve, might not.

I don't know diptheria but I've been suspicious that my last farm had wormer-resistant lungworm - would have been the only farm in NZ where I've seen lungworm. Or it might have been pneumonia. Any vet I mentioned coughing calves to told me it wasn't worth worrying about.
 
KNERSIE":2ewld5e8 said:
Randi, its certainly a possibility, but it had all the signs of pneumonia as well. After a quick look at the Merck manual I think I should go with a few more days of Predef?


I would sure consider it, if it is Diphtheria it will certainly help. With Diphtheria, the breathing will be really raspy, even hoarse, and they do cough too. Any pneumonia we have ever dealt with is usuall rapid breathing, maybe loud, but not raspy or hoarse.
 
hillsdown":189tprlx said:
I would continue with predef as well and you can even give it every second day for a few days if you wish ,it might be less evasive. I have never had problems with predef I have with banamine though.

If she does not respond like you want you can always do another course of antibiotics maybe even switch to draxxin or exceed.

Randi, if it was diphtheria wouldn't she have other symptoms like sores in the mouth ? Thankfully I have no first hand experience with it.


Not in the cases we have dealt with. You will often have calves with sores in their mouth at the same time, or even with lumps, but in my experience the calves with the respiritory form won't often have sores or lumps.

As for treating Diphtheria, Nuflor works for us, but it takes a long course of treatment of it, anti-inflamatories and then Oxy LA. If anyone wants to know it, I can post it. Diphtheria is the same disease that causes footrot, so most drugs that treat that will work for Diphtheria.
 
If you can get Draxxin that's what I'd give it.

I'm curious what you consider cold?
 
Ned Jr.":38m4k29s said:
If you can get Draxxin that's what I'd give it.

I'm curious what you consider cold?

Ned, it is not so much the cold that would be a problem but the fluctuation in temps as well as the humidity, even +5 celcius with a humidity of 60% would seem cold and be very hard on a calf if they were sitting at +20 c's and 10% humidity earlier that day.

Good luck Knersie, and let us know how the calf doing.

FWIW I was going to say use NUflOR as it is a brood spectrum and it will work even if you are not dealing with pneumonia but,,, I digress. ( I hate to sound like a parrot..) :help:
 
I remember a talk our vet gave at a dinner she hosted for the area cattle producers. In her talk, she talked on how people doctors perscribe antibiotics for 7-14 days and some for 21 days to get all the bacteria. If the bacteria is not fully gone, relapse occurs and much harder to fight. In her talk, she said, if we do this for human bacteria infections, we should think along these lines for cattle, thus alot less relapses that become harder to treat. This is one of the reasons that Excede...in the ear type and draxin were created. To minimize the stress on animals with daily injections. Nuflor SQ is another.
For this young calf, I would treat 10 days minimum and evaluate from there. If no sign of improvement after 3-4 days, evaluate the drug of choice.
Go with a non steriod like anafin as well.
 

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