Scouring Calves

For some reason there have been many problems for suckler calves this month. This has not been explained totally by the erratic weather although the changeable conditions have contributed to the difficulties. There have been scour problems for newly born calves that were born outside. One or two cases have thought to have been triggered because there were doubts if the calves had been taking sufficient colostrum early enough. Left to themselves you can never be sure as some animals stay at the teats for a long time and may appear to suckle but do not swallow sufficient to boost their blood antibody levels. Having said that this month we were seeing calves that had been tube fed colostrum scouring, and sometimes dying because they had picked up an aggressive E coli infection. These are the sort of infections that occur in the winter when stock is housed, they seem to spread in the summer when the ground is wet and because cattle have been lying on the same areas of bare soil and have contaminated their teats. It is not always easy to spot the early stages when calves are scouring out in the field and treatments can be difficult as some calves are not easy to catch even when they are ill. As long as you know the infection involved sometimes preventative antibiotics when first born is the best way to manage the infection.

Rough Ground

I seem to have walked over several fields this month either to treat animals or to get cattle in for tuberculin testing. At the moment it seems that all fields are poached to some degree and on some pastures the fields are so hard it is difficult to walk across them. This has caused problems for younger cattle. One group of bulling heifers in particular on a farm where they do not normally get cases of dermatitis have had to treat several animals with swollen feet often with bleeding lesions affecting all four feet. This seems to be a dry dermatitis, I presume from constant trauma from the hard and rutted ground. Even when the ground is hard young cattle still like to let off steam and race around sometimes. Most of these cases have responded to the antibiotic spray and single doses of antibiotic, but it is a time consuming business to get affected animals in for treatment and spotting individuals that are just starting to go lame on the rough ground.

Blind Lambs

I’ve seem three lambs with listeria this week, one of them was a bit odd but the other two showed the typical signs of not being able to see and turning with their head down away from the sunlight. Listeria is a bacterium in the soil that can get from the gut into the blood stream to start a mild septicaemia. Often that is all that it does, the defences of the body overcome it and you would not have realised that it was there. Sometimes if there is a bigger challenge from the infection it will become established in the membranes that surround the brain as the body is trying to filter it out of the bloodstream and stop it getting established in the brain tissue itself.

Swollen Brains

The brain is contained inside a rigid box so it gets pushed forwards when there is extra fluid present. Usually the part that gets compressed first is the optic centre, the part responsible for vision.The animal starts to act oddly pressing its head against any solid object as it has a head ache and finds it difficult to cope in bright light. If you spot the first symptoms of meningitis there is a fairly good chance that we will be able to get some response to treatment. I tend to give a high dose of oxytetracycline into a vein as this will destroy the infection. It will take several days for the swelling and the fluid to go away and some animals will never be quite the same as they once were as their brain will be permanently damaged.

Infected Silage

Listeria will also occur in the winter when baled silage is fed. This time there will be more of the bug in the fodder as it multiplies rapidly when the silage heats up after cutting. This is made worse if the silage is contaminated with soil from mole hills or cutting too close to the ground. When lambs get older as the year moves on they do not seem to be so vulnerable to the disease so keep a close eye out for it in the next month especially if the weather stays warm and grazing is reatricted.

Older Cow on Farm Slaughter

It took a bit of luck, but I have managed to send a downer cow off after on farm slaughter on the Older Cow Disposal Scheme. They must have been born on or before 31^st July 1996. They should not have had any drugs that would otherwise make them unfit for human consumption and they must have sustained some sort of acute accident or injury. This particular animal was a suckler cow who was only just old enough for the scheme and had been flattened by a bull who tried to serve her on a concrete yard. It is not easy to meet all of the required criteria, but older cows will get bullied and knocked over from time to time. There is no section on the form to say when the accident occurred so there is some flexibility at least. As time goes on the value of older cows gets less and less so this is a way of salvaging something.

Drug Ban

I understand from CEVA that oestradiol is going to be banned from use in all animals in the EEC from the 14^th of October. This is a hormone that has been used in the past to stimulate fertility in farm animals although other products have been found to be more reliable. It is also included as a capsule in PRIDS. With the capsule there is a fair chance that the cow will ovulate two days after the devise has been removed. CEVA have been forced to remove the hormone capsule from their PRIDS. This means that when they are used to stimulate oestrus in animals that have not been seen in oestrus they should be left in for seven days and a prostaglandin injection is now required 24 hours before the devise is removed. This is not good news as it is often just one or two animals in a group that need help from a PRID and it makes it expensive if further visits and injections are required after seven days. This extra dose of estrumate should not be necessary when PRIDS are use to treat cows with cystic ovaries.

Who Makes the Rules

There have also been questions about the Single Payments Cross Compliance form which apparently in part G subsection j asks about substances with hormonal or thyrostatic actions. Apparently the old PRID was breaking this code but the new one without the capsule is alright to use. It should not be two difficult to comply with the new rules, but it is a shame that drug use is dictated by a department in the EEC. I have not read any scientific paper concerning the dangers of oestradiol in food producing animals. It is after all a natural hormone that cows produce when they are in season, let us hope that there will be no ban on the sale of milk from cows that are bulling.

Early Lambing

There are three or four things that you must get right if you want an early lamb crop. First of all it is mainly the breeds that tend to produce the most milk that are selected for this purpose. Hopefully most of them would have had one cow dry cow tube split between the two glands to stop chronic mastitis infections when the lambs were weaned. It is still worth checking the udders of the animals you want to breed from.

Sheep ovulate better if they are on a rising level of nutrition when they get to the ram. This can be difficult to organise if they are already in a fit condition. They might need to be severely restricted now so that you can let them, have more grazing and possibly a small amount of corn as tupping time approaches.

Foot Trimming

Most rams only work for a few weeks each year, it is important that their feet do not let them down. Spend a little time foot trimming now so that lameness problems will not occur once they start to get active.

If you only have one ram have a close look at his working parts. The testicles should be firm, but not hard and they should both be the same size if he is to work effectively at the beginning of the season.

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