One of our bulls and one of our cows just never woke up yesterday morning. We have not yet determined the cause of death. We did not discover them until late this evening. They went to their stalls in the barn and we found them lying side by side. I have called a rendering service to schedule removal. Once they are removed from our barn, what cleanup procedures need to be done to make sure that the barn is sanitary for our other cattle to go back in? We have a very small herd, and only one tw0-year old heifer and a calf about 6 weeks old are left now. The calf's mother is dead, but he seems to be eating grass okay. We have not seen him try to nurse the other heifer at all yet, but maybe she will let him. We think that she might actually be pregnant at the moment too. Both animals seem to have a hacking cough. We had to force them out of the barn tonight, as the calf did not want to leave his mother. We put them in a pen to keep them away from the barn tonight, and I will call the vet to come check on them the first thing in the AM. Any suggestions about other precautions we need to take are welcome!
This is what we have done now: The dead cows are out of the barn and we put lime down over the area where they were lying. The vet said that the other cows were okay. We bought some Aureomycin to add to their feed to help with the coughing.
Jana, did the vet say what caused the cattle to die? I hope all goes well for your other cattle.
> This is what we have done now: The
> dead cows are out of the barn and
> we put lime down over the area
> where they were lying. The vet
> said that the other cows were
> okay. We bought some Aureomycin to
> add to their feed to help with the
> coughing.
We did not discover the dead animals until it was too late to do any sort of autopsy on them. We suspect that a couple of things could have happened: it was raining that day, so lightning could have struck them. Also the state road crew had just sprayed some weeds near our fencerow, so poisoning is a possibility. You can only do an accurate autopsy within six hours of death, so we will never know for sure.
I am still just a little worried about the other two, because they still have a sort of a dry, hacking cough, which makes me think that maybe the smell of the dead ones got into their lungs, or they could have inhaled some chemicals from spraying crops or fencerows. I'm hoping that it just takes a little time for the Aureomycin to kick in.
> Jana, did the vet say what caused
> the cattle to die? I hope all goes
> well for your other cattle.
I'd keep a close eye on your remaining animals. It sounds curious to me that your vet said they are fine, yet they are hacking so much. We recently nearly lost a finished steer to pneumonia that came on very suddenly. Keep us posted as to how everyone is doing.
