Question for Lucky_P and Others

[inyati13]

In another thread you discussed what you see in cattle stomachs. I see old broken down fence wire on my farm, both barbed wire and woven wire. Sometimes it is laying flat and mostly buried so would probably be grazed over. Othertimes I find a piece of wire sticking up so that it would be in the zone where an animal would catch it with the scything action of their tongue as they sweep the grass to grip with their mouth. I have wondered about two things. First, when a cow senses the nature of what she sweeps into her mouth, if it feels unnatural, does she have the abilities to reject it? Second, do you believe that the wire that is swallowed mostly ends up causing no harm or do you believe there is a high incidence of harm? Lastly, where do you see most of the hardware (which part of the stomach)? I guess I just thought of another question, do you believe magnets provide a high enough level of protection to place them in your cows?

 

[ANAZAZI]

Many times they shake their heads with mouth open to get something bad out. Many times have I found shed cow teeth where I feed, for example. And for many years did we not use a sharp horn on the loader, but a blunt one, this left a piece of silage plastic as big as my hand in the middle of each bale. This piece of plastic was always found later; same goes for the ocational dead branch or worn off steel part from a silage machine, many times have we butchered cattle at home, never finding odd objects in intestines even when looking for them.
Some cattle can eat all kinds of unnatural things out of boredom, or mineral deficiency :2cents:

 

[chippie]

The best thing is too pick up any old wire or trash that you see. Cattle do not chew when they graze so many times they won't know that they picked up a foreign object. Wire can pierce the rumen and migrate. The vet clinic that I worked at posted a bull that had died. He had ingested a piece of wire. It pierced the rumen and reached his heart.

Magnets can help, but I don't think that they are a cure all.

 

[inyati13]

I pick up everything I see. I go looking for unsafe materials, wire, etc. when I have down time. I want my farm to be cattle safe. But I know there will always be something. And people throw stuff out along the frontage road. Thanks, to both above.

 

[Lucky_P]

Like chippie said - they're just grabbing mouthfuls, chewing just enough to be able to swallow the bolus, and later, regurgitating their cud to chew it better. IF they noticed the wire, nail, etc., they might spit it out, but most of time, they just swallow it on down. Most, if not all, 'hardware' drops into the reticulum - the second compartment of the forestomachs - located just behind the diaphragm and liver - and just short poke through to the pericardial sac.
Hardware, especially in harvested forages, is a big enough problem on many dairies that heifers are routinely administered a magnet. I don't routinely give magnets to my cows, but have had two cases of hardware dz in the past two years, probably came in the hay I feed - and a magnet 'put them right', so the wire had not yet penetrated to the pericardial sac.
I see lots of cows with old adhesions suggesting that they'd had previous bouts of hardware dz in the past - but only ended up with localized, non-life-threatening peritonitis that resolved - and the offending wire/nail was long gone. Probably see 10 cows with evidence of previous bouts of hardware dz(not the cause of death) to the 1 cow that dies of active hardware disease - but I'll be the first to admit that my caseload is skewed - I can only comment on the ones I see coming through the necropsy lab.
Most cows that die of hardware dz have restrictive pericarditis - bacteria from the reticulum wick along the penetrating wire, set up infection in the pericardium and the animal ends up with a thick layer of scar tissue surrounding the heart, interfering with normal contraction/relaxation, resulting in congestive heart failure. I've seen ONE cow that had a wire penetrate the pericardium, lacerate a small vessel on the surface of the heart, resulting in cardiac tamponade - the pericardial sac filled with blood, preventing the heart from being able to contract/expand.

 

[inyati13]

Thanks. That was an excellent response.