sick calf- symptoms

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cowsrus

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sale barn calf,chronic cough, not as heavy as it should be, slick hair coat. temp normal (101.5). been moping around with his head down last few days. he's not breathing hard and we checked his lungs w/ a stethoscope tonite and they were clear as best as we could tell. vet says he's a lunger and told me to treat him with baytrill and banamine which i did last night, but tonite hes down and can't get up. i retreated him tonight, but it doesn't look good.
 
Update- this morning i checked on the calf, expecting the worst and he was up and eating hay. i forgot to say yesterday that when i was giving him the I.M. shot , i had trouble finding enough muscle area to give the shot. i've been worming them all using a generic ivemectin pour on. the amount of feed and grass they have access to should be suffiencent to allow more weight than they are putting on. i wonder if i'm missing something?
 
No you are not missing anything. You probably have a calf that is PI. It will always do poor. Watch for the enviromental factors. With PI when there is external stress the pnemonia will maniest itself again and again. As well, if the calf gets scours or any sickness, be on guard and prepared to prevent the pnemonia from setting in again. It's a wait and see game now. Good luck an I hope you can pull them through.
 
As a beginner, I don't know what the term "PI" means so I looked it up and found this and thought it may be of interest to others:

PI calves are carrier animals that survive after being infected with BVD virus early in gestation. While uncommon at about 1 percent of the total population, PI calves can appear perfectly healthy and still spread the BVD virus through herds and feedlot pens with great efficiency.

Identification and isolation of PI calves is the cornerstone of BVD-control strategies. Ideally, this occurs at the cow-calf stage, but some stocker and feedlot operations have adopted testing programs to protect animal health in their operations. Based on the potential losses from BVD, producers at any stage probably come out ahead, even if they take a total loss on the occasional PI animal. However, a PI calf that is healthy in other respects represents a significant value, and BVD poses no risk in terms of beef safety. This raises the question of whether producers might have an opportunity to capture some value by feeding PI calves to heavier weights.

Keep them out of the market

There is, as yet, no single answer for the question of what to do with PI calves, says Bill Hessman, a veterinarian with Haskell County Animal Hospital, Sublette, Kan., and operations manager for Central States Testing, a BVD diagnostic service. The best solution varies from one operation to the next, he says, but the most important thing is to keep these animals out of the market.

A few producers, Hessman says, test their cattle and knowingly send PI calves to market without disclosure. In doing so, they risk exposing other cattle through the marketing chain, violate just about anyone�s ethical standards and potentially expose themselves to legal action.
 
cowsrus":22u9zy9j said:
i forgot to say yesterday that when i was giving him the I.M. shot , i had trouble finding enough muscle area to give the shot. i've been worming them all using a generic ivemectin pour on. the amount of feed and grass they have access to should be suffiencent to allow more weight than they are putting on. i wonder if i'm missing something?

Having no experience with Banamine, I'm assuming that is the IM injection you're talking about. I know for a fact that Baytril is Subq only in cattle - and that came right off the label.
 
yes, Banamine is given i.m. and Baytrill is given s.q.gave Baytrill for 3 days and Banamine for 2 days. calf is still alive and getting up maybe once or twice a day. not looking very good. had a different vet out last night to look at him and he said he was pretty sure the calf was a "lunger". said the best way to tell for sure is to do an autopsy on him. He said the treatment was the same as i had been doing, but he didn't give the calf much of a chance. i don't know if a "lunger" is the same as a P.I. calf or not. he didn't mention P.I. though. I'm really concerned about next year buying calves and he gave me some good suggestions.
 
Possibly a preconditioned sale would be better or maybe get an experienced cattle person in your area to help you .

Larry
 
if you want you can find a rancher/farmer to sell you calves that follow a strict vaccination schedule. You would probably have to pay a good price.
You could also higher a buyer to buy your calves and specify preconditioned.

If i were you I would buy calves that were:
1. had cows pre breeding vaccinated with ML vaccines
2. calves that had both the first and booster shot of the respiratory illness shots, as well as black leg, and what ever else the vaccines in your area have, Yes again for me it would be ML. I would ask that the second dose be atleast 3 weeks prior to weaning and shipping. This is because it takes that long for the vaccines to build up in the system.
3. worming would be a good idea.

Please do not make this a debate of ML or killed. I'm just saying what i would want in a preconditoned calf.
 

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