semen puss

[angus9259]

Took a group of bulls for their pre-sale BSEs on Monday. They all passed but one. He had semen "clumping" and some puss. I was told he had some "infection" - that it was no big deal - get him on an antibiotic regimen for a week and retest a week after that. I asked it was some type of VD but he said it wasn't.

Vet said it was likely an infection in his seminal vesicles - also said it was no big deal - put him on 20 cc / day of pen g for a week.

Never had an infection turn up in a BSE before. Thoughts?

 

[Lucky_P]

Saw it with some regularity when I was in practice - usually seminal vesiculitis. Not all that uncommon, particularly in group-penned bulls - especially if there's a lot of mounting going on.
Review of the literature suggests that E.coli is the most common bacterial isolate.

 

[angus9259]

Interesting. Didn't seem to hurt his potency. He cleaned up a dozen missed AI cows w/o skipping a beat.

 

[Lucky_P]

He may have covered the cows, but the jury's still out on how many will conceive to those breedings.
In my limited experience, most will clear and come back to fertility.
Probably any number of antibiotics would work. I usually gave a combination of LA-200 and sustained release sulfa boluses - mainly because that combo worked well for me on a number of ailments, and so that the owner(or me) only had to treat 'em every 3 days.

 

[angus9259]

1. So since the cows did actually conceive by palpation after one service does that suggest the infection probably took place AFTER being run back into the bull pen?

2. How does your treatment compare in efficacy to the daily use of Pen G? Sure seems easier than running this bull through the chute every day.

3. How many days do you think I actually need to keep up the Pen G? Bottle says not to exceed 2 applications.

4. If he passes his BSE in a week and I don't run him back into the bull pen, then that means he's "saleable"?

5. If the BSE hadn't caught the infection, would the bull's immune system eventually work it out?

Sorry for all the questions - just want to do right by my customers w/o working me or the bull into a frenzy.

 

[Lucky_P]

angus9259,
Well, it looks like I shot my mouth off without doing a thorough review of the current literature. Sometimes old 'knowledge' is faulty knowledge. My apologies...
There's a decent short discussion of seminal vesiculitis about 3/4 of the way down this page from the Society for Theriogenology: http://www.vetmed.lsu.edu/eiltslotus/th ... 1/bull.htm
Should answer most of your questions.

I left practice and have been doing diagnostic pathology for the past 20 years, so other than treating my own cattle, and being involved with diagnostic cases and peripheral involvement with cases my wife saw while she was still in active practice, I've not encountered a case of seminal vesiculitis in years, other than seeing 'pus' in semen samples we evaluate here at the lab.

How does treatment with LA-100 & sulfas compare to PPG? I dunno. It would still be my choice, though, just based on previous performance.

Most producers - and many veterinarians - misuse penicillin. Appropriate dosage, regardless of what may be stated on the bottle, of procaine penicillin G( PPG, 300,000 IU/ml) is 3ml/100 lb body weight twice daily. Less than that is underdosing, and a single injection only provides about 12 hours of therapeutic blood levels, hence the need to give it twice daily. When I used it, we'd go for at least 3-5 days, and evaluate progress at that time; if no response, we'd switch to something else.

The 'long-acting'/48 hour penicillin stuff - is garbage. Yeah, it stays in their system for 48 hours, but the 'long-acting' portion, the benzathine penicillin G, never reaches a blood/tissue level high enough to do anything, and if you give it at the label dosage of 2ml/150 lb, you're not getting enough PPG in the animal to get the blood levels of the drug up to therapeutic levels, and even then, it drops off drastically after 12 hrs. This stuff got FDA approval back in the Dark Ages, I presume before anyone was doing pharmacokinetic studies; I don't think it would pass muster if they had to go through the approval process today.

 

[angus9259]

A man with one watch knows the time . . . a man with two is confused.

Probably just should have given the ol boy a slug of Nuflor like I was thinking about.

Seminal vesiculitis sounds rough from that link. Wonder if that's what it really is given the symptoms. He exhibits no pain even while breeding. Obviously some folks have had some success with antibiotics contrary to the web link.

Like I said . . . a man with two watches is confused.