A
Anonymous
My “affected” calf died at 50 days of age. During the last couple of weeks of his life he would go from normalcy, to periods of mild incoordination , to increasing longer periods of recumbancy , in which he was unable to rise, was blind, unresponsive and maintained a degree of convulsive type activity. Later I would find him prone, normal appearing and exhausted.
Believing my vets ‘guess’ that it was a type of congenital syndrome, I shrugged it off as just one of those things, and that I would likely never see again.
Yesterday I discovered another. This calf since three weeks ( now 2 months) of age has been our pet. He runs over on a daily basis during our walkthroughs, to get a scratch and to offer to head bunt in play. We got our usual visitation by him in the morning . In the afternoon I had been watching a newborn trying to nurse. And that’s when I spotted him unable to rise. He could get his back legs up but was unable to lift himself on the front end, and I watched in horror as he continued to flop about.
I called the vet and told them we were coming right over. By the time we had the trailer hitched up, the calf was up and walking about. He lost control and collapsed 3 times on the way into the corral and we were fortunate to get him and his mother loaded.
Of course the calf unloaded at the vet as normal appearing as any other healthy calf, but within 5 minutes started to slip on the front end, and within 10 minutes was totally spastic and somewhat blind. He had no blink reflex to a hit threat. A few minutes later he was up on his feet again and they examined his behaviour outside. He seemed to be able to see solid wall objects but not see the bars on the panels and would walk right into them.
The two vets examining him came up with a tentative diagnosis of lead poisoning. They took several vials of blood for testing, and treated him with calcium EDTA. He said it would be no real benefit, because the damage is already done neurologically speaking. They also examined the cow and found her to be in perfect health.
I have lived on this farm for 27 years and never had a case of lead poisoning. Where would it come from(?) Is the question we asked ourselves. It had to be something different. We have two oil wells on the property but the calves have not been in those pastures yet.
There is a badger hole on the side of a slope, and this spring the cows have gotten into this and dug quite a deep, broad hole. I have noticed this before, in other pastures and wonder why they like to dig into it. And lay in it… and lounge in it….and flip the dirt over there back with a hoof. That’s all the cows do there, but the calves like to lick the dirt. Calves lick and taste everything. They are like human babies in that everything goes into the Mouth at least once. Closer examination of this hole shows me that things were buried here years and years ago. I can see metal pieces and a few bones. The metal pieces look like large machinery parts. And there likely could be decayed batteries, outdated chemicals, any number of toxic items thrown away by the people who lived here 100 years ago. No doubt that is the source of contamination right there.
When we bought this place, we spent several months cleaning up trash. Little did we know that some of it was buried as well. All we can do is fence it off.
That’s my sad story. Hopefully my loss can be someone else’s gain by simply making them aware of how easily this kind of thing can occur.
[email protected]
Believing my vets ‘guess’ that it was a type of congenital syndrome, I shrugged it off as just one of those things, and that I would likely never see again.
Yesterday I discovered another. This calf since three weeks ( now 2 months) of age has been our pet. He runs over on a daily basis during our walkthroughs, to get a scratch and to offer to head bunt in play. We got our usual visitation by him in the morning . In the afternoon I had been watching a newborn trying to nurse. And that’s when I spotted him unable to rise. He could get his back legs up but was unable to lift himself on the front end, and I watched in horror as he continued to flop about.
I called the vet and told them we were coming right over. By the time we had the trailer hitched up, the calf was up and walking about. He lost control and collapsed 3 times on the way into the corral and we were fortunate to get him and his mother loaded.
Of course the calf unloaded at the vet as normal appearing as any other healthy calf, but within 5 minutes started to slip on the front end, and within 10 minutes was totally spastic and somewhat blind. He had no blink reflex to a hit threat. A few minutes later he was up on his feet again and they examined his behaviour outside. He seemed to be able to see solid wall objects but not see the bars on the panels and would walk right into them.
The two vets examining him came up with a tentative diagnosis of lead poisoning. They took several vials of blood for testing, and treated him with calcium EDTA. He said it would be no real benefit, because the damage is already done neurologically speaking. They also examined the cow and found her to be in perfect health.
I have lived on this farm for 27 years and never had a case of lead poisoning. Where would it come from(?) Is the question we asked ourselves. It had to be something different. We have two oil wells on the property but the calves have not been in those pastures yet.
There is a badger hole on the side of a slope, and this spring the cows have gotten into this and dug quite a deep, broad hole. I have noticed this before, in other pastures and wonder why they like to dig into it. And lay in it… and lounge in it….and flip the dirt over there back with a hoof. That’s all the cows do there, but the calves like to lick the dirt. Calves lick and taste everything. They are like human babies in that everything goes into the Mouth at least once. Closer examination of this hole shows me that things were buried here years and years ago. I can see metal pieces and a few bones. The metal pieces look like large machinery parts. And there likely could be decayed batteries, outdated chemicals, any number of toxic items thrown away by the people who lived here 100 years ago. No doubt that is the source of contamination right there.
When we bought this place, we spent several months cleaning up trash. Little did we know that some of it was buried as well. All we can do is fence it off.
That’s my sad story. Hopefully my loss can be someone else’s gain by simply making them aware of how easily this kind of thing can occur.
[email protected]
