Post Mortems

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TCFC

TCFC

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
138
City & State/Province
Prince Edward Island, Canada
Hey guys, just a question out of sheer curiosity...

How many people get post mortems done on their cattle, whether they have been sick for a while and died, or have been suddenly found dead?
I see a lot of posts (especially lately) of people who have had cattle mysteriously die and are wondering why. I would think that if there is a chance it may be something that could affect the rest of my herd I would want to know a definitive answer. (this is of course, from someone who does not have cattle...)

If you do get post mortems done, why?

if not, why not? Cost? Availability of someone to do it?

Or are post mortems something that is just not regularily done.

I see so much livestock coming in for post mortems, and they seem to be really helpful (and sometimes can get some form of compensation in the case of adverse vaccination or drug reactions that were not listed as warnings)

Not a critical post at all by any means, just wondering what the prevalance of having post mortems performed is.

TCFC
 
TCFC, I think you raise some very good questions.

Haven't lost an adult (knock on wood), but did have an aborted fetus that was shipped with the placenta, to determine what went wrong ("incompetent cervix"). UPS and Fed-Ex charges, overnight, are getting very pricey these days. If we were to lose an adult, you can bet we'd call the vet, either to do a necropsy on the farm or take specimen samples to send to a lab. I think it costs about $60-$70 to have a necropsy done at the state lab and maybe a little more than that to have the vet do it (farm call plus the procedure) but even at the state lab, you'd have to haul the carcass up there somehow, not my idea of fun. Either way, I think it's important to determine the cause of death and whether or not it's going to affect the other animals in the herd.
 
We do and we don't, just depends on the circumstances surrounding the death. If we had an animal that had been sick for a while and we know what the illness was then we won't do one. If we had one die for no apparent reason, we will usually get one done.
 
Sometimes when calves die, more than 2-3 at a time, we do necropsy's, to determine cause of death, what bug killed them, as to prevent any others from getting it.

GMN
 
Whether or not we post-mortem depends entirely on how many we have lost and the time frame that we lost them in. We haven't lost an adult animal in years, so that takes care of that part of the question. If we lose 2 or more calves in rapid, or fairly rapid succession, then a post mortem will be done. If two or more calves die of the same syptoms - regardless of the time frame - and we don't know what the cause is, then a post mortem will be done. In the case of the odd calf that dies, no post mortem is done because we usually have a pretty good idea of why the calf died, and because it tends to be a part of the business.
 

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