Unknown disease???

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about 3-4 weeks ago we found one of our charolais cows, who is feeding a calf who is 4 months old, in the paddock. her breathing was rapid and made a kind of schreeching sound as she inhaled. when made to walk she grunts as though she is short of breath and has asthma like symptoms. she has since lost a sickening amount of weight and she is always sitting down. we have treated her with anti-biotics for the past 4-5 days, hoping it would cure whatever she has. So far no luck. if you have any idea of what could be wrong with our dear cow, please let me know. im afraid she wont be around much longer but it would help to know what we are dealing with.



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we have called the vet and they werent much help. we are thinking that maybe she has swallowed some wire. the vet also said that. but we just want to see if there are any diseases it could be

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Sounds like something in the lungs, but the sitting is also currious.

I would consider Lymphoma, putting preasure on nerves in the hind end that are making it difficult to stand, if there were debris in the lungs I would expect to see increased adema in the thorax, visible in the brisket and heart girth, I would certainly call the vet to pull blood and collect a CSF sample from her spinal fluid and look for leucosytes under the scope with a stained slide. In any case the kind thing to do would be to put the cow out of her misery and pull the calf off, and cull in the event of disease transmition. Also, palpate for any unusualy large lymph in the pelvic area.

Good luck, the right choices are sometimes the hardest to live with.

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If her nose scabed over it is probably IBR. Did you treat her with nuflor or LA200? Try them and see if they work. One thing you will learn is that when you have livestock you will also have a certain amount of dead stock.Sometimes when cattle get certain types of pneumonia it frys out their lungs and creates so much damage that they will never fully recover.
 
Just reading over the messages, saw this strand, and wondered how it turned out with your cow. What did it end up being? I was just curious. I hope she is as good as new...

Duncan

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In theory, guess I would agree that with livestock you can end up with dead stock. But, at what percentage of dead stock? 1% 5% 10% ???? On the practical management side, I do not consider even 1% dead stock. By proper & quality foundation (registered) stock selection, regular & religious vaccination, de-worming, sanitation, close monitoring of calving dams, calling the Vet without delay when anything is suspect, feeding program at a high quality level, ANY incidence of dead stock (except by accident or Act of God) should be reason to re-evaluate your program. In our program we have never had a death and have zero tolerance for health or genetic related death...if we did, we would spend $$$$ to find out WHY it happened so that we would not repeat the same "mistake"(?).

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This is not an unknown disease.It is probably hardware or respitory both have already been suggested.I am also seeing alot of concern about cherry leaves.If someone has been cutting or clearing in a fence row they need to be very careful with the cherry.I have heard that they act similar to brd cattle before they die but I have never seen an animal die from this maybe some of the other posters have.I have noticed that calves with brd do lay around and stop eating.



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