Yearlings losing weight

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wbenchfarms

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Have been seeing this and hearing of this in our area quite a bit. Weaned calves and yearlings going down hill. Pretty much wasting away. Calves have diarrhea, never go off feed or water, but just lose weight fast. Seeing a little bit of bottle jaw in a couple. We have a couple calves that we're having this issue with. Have samples out going to Cornell at around $200 per calf. Sure hope we find out what the issues are. All have been vaccinated, dewormed, etc. Antibiotics don't seem to touch anything. Have been treating with Kaolin Pectin, Keto Tubes, and Pro Bios, which has helped some. Just heard today of another producer with calves with the same issues. Just trying to figure out what we may be dealing with. Hopefully the test results will give us something to go on. The vets don't seem to have any ideas at the moment.
 
That's what it seems like to me also, but the age just doesn't fit in right. These are calves that were raised by us and from two different Farms also so that doesn't seem to fit. Pretty sudden onset. The only thing in common is that they were at another Farm all together.
 
Long shot with more than just your calves - and calves in general - but hardware can also cause bottle jaw, weight loss & diarrhea. Recent thread:

http://cattletoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=120058
 
I did see that post, and have thought this in the past when we have a calf out the blue like this. We had a really wet spring and just started drying up the last 3 weeks. I'm wondering if we aren't dealing with something brought on by that.
 
Have you treated for coccidiosis? I've seen it get bad enough to kill yearlings (diarrhea, wasting, bottle jaw) under the right conditions.
 
wbenchfarms said:
Did a 3 day treatment of Corid and didn't seem to help.
Click to expand...
Not sure how long ago the treatment was, but symptoms will take longer than a couple of days to resolve even after the infection is cleared. The damage done to the intestine can take weeks to heal in severe cases.
 
Treated right after the 4th of July. Still going downhill since then. I didn't notice any evidence of coccidiosis, but did the treatment just as a precaution.
 
Has anyone had any experience with liver flukes or deer flukes? I had mentioned this to my vet a year or so ago, and was told that it probably wasn't an issue. From what I've read about flukes, it's a possibility that they give some of the signs we are seeing.
 
wbenchfarms said:
Has anyone had any experience with liver flukes or deer flukes? I had mentioned this to my vet a year or so ago, and was told that it probably wasn't an issue. From what I've read about flukes, it's a possibility that they give some of the signs we are seeing.
Click to expand...

We have to be careful about being on top of liver flukes here. Absolutely see these symptoms when one is heavily infested. They get anemic and bottle jaw. Treat hard for liver flukes (we ran fecals to be sure) and it cleared up.
We had a friend almost loose her steer because she didn't know about liver flukes. We treated her steer for liver flukes and he straightened up and looked excellent at butcher.
 
We had a new vet out today to do a necropsy on one of these calves. She seems to be really knowledgeable, and we really like her. My wife helped with it, since I couldn't get out of work. So, she did take lots of pictures to send me so I could take a look at things. If anyone is interested I could send them, or if it's allowed, I could post them here. Wasn't sure on that. There was really nothing out of the ordinary on this calf, which was really surprising. The only things that was noticed was that the gallbladder was greatly enlarged, there was some damage to the liver, and some lesions on the outside of the intestines. Other than that everything else seem to be perfectly normal. She did take some samples to send off for further analysis. We did get back some of the test results we sent to Cornell earlier in the week. On the fecal, everything was normal. It looks like our deworming and coccidiosis program is working like it should. I am completely baffled. As was the vet. Not really sure what else to look for. All of our other cattle, feeders, cows, and calves are in excellent shape. I am definitely open to any ideas. We have a good mineral and feed program, but I don't know what kind of deficiency, if any, would cause what we are seeing. And not sure if there is anything along those lines that we should be testing for it. Didn't seem to be liver flukes, as no evidence in the liver or in the fecal samples. The vet did mention possibly some type of clostridial organism, but we're not really leaning that way because clostridial is usually a pretty sudden onset, and we are not seeing that.
 
Hmm. Not much to see there. Certainly nothing definitively diagnostic of any particular disease condition.
 
Just wanted to post an update on the issue that we have been having. Got the test results back on the necropsy and tested positive for Salmonella and Clostridial type A. Both are something not normally vaccinated against. We treated the entire herd with a round of Aureomycin, and shipped the calves that we with this bunch. Haven't had anything else show any signs, so fingers crossed.
 

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