58 day old calve with TB!

[Beefysheeps]

Hello all
How many on here have had issues with baby calves coming down with TB?
Have a 58 day old bought in calve react. Been on farm only 3weeks I think? And was within age for our yearly test.. So young!

The vet has said it’s the largest lumps that she has ever seen, talking to the different scientist vet from defra she said that it must be very heavily infected to have such large lumps!
Just wondered how many others have had such young calves go down with this. Defra can’t give me figures they was very helpful said that I needed to look on their website but it could take hours to find trawling through the different ones.
Part of me wants to take this to the press, mainly as after all of the things that went on with the alpaca a lot of the comments on different pages did get to me! the part that people are saying farmers kill them anyway to all of the comments that was about the cattle, I just feel that it would be something to put out there that This baby calf is now going to have no quality of life due to this disease. and how things are with it in this country, also to the part that we would give it the best of life that it had along with being checked we was from all the rules we have to follow…yet now due to the outdated system and also with how rife that it still is, it’s now not going to have a quality of life! along with all of the others that I’ve had the same result.

But maybe I’m beating around bush for now point?

 

[organicguy]

sh!t happens. Unlucky to have bought one in but hopefully it will be your only case.
Most likely it's dam had lesions in the udder.
Tb infected milk fed to calves can cause massive our breaks, hence why testing goes down to 42 days.

Think carefully about what you and the industry have to gain if you publish what has happened. If your are sure that you want to, write your response and leave it 24 hours before you post.

 

[Beefysheeps]

sh!t happens. Unlucky to have bought one in but hopefully it will be your only case.
Most likely it's dam had lesions in the udder.
Tb infected milk fed to calves can cause massive our breaks, hence why testing goes down to 42 days.

Think carefully about what you and the industry have to gain if you publish what has happened. If your are sure that you want to, write your response and leave it 24 hours before you post.

Ah makes sense would come from milk, thou being From a dairy I wonder if it was its mothers milk could’ve been any of them I suppose as some are often fed on dumper milk, or was in the years that I milked cows Maybe that style of farming has change now, it was a good 15 years ago that I relife milked.

Yes you have a very good point there! I wonder what sort of people it would attract if I was to do so, don’t really want a yard full of Banner holding vegan nutcases
Though I’m sure the Muck spreader or something would soon get rid of them

I’ve just been speaking to the ministry Vet, or a scientist bet from DEFRA. She couldn’t give me any numbers of such of the amounts of such young animals coming down with this, she did give me their website that I control through to look up the statistics but even she said that would take hours, and for a simpleton dyslexic like myself I’m not sure I would get far! She was so very helpful and she did say that she felt it was very rare it being so young.
Guess we can call ourselves very lucky as over the last 70+ years of keeping cattle this is our first case On our farm! And if as infected as it is at least we thought it now rather than its sitting the year in the barn with all of the other calf’s passing it about..

 

[milkloss]

Is it worth contacting the farm it came from and give them a heads up? I should imagine you'll have to be very careful how you'd approach it though.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

One of the few cases of TB confirmed on this farm occured in very similar circumstances.
Luckily we had our our annual test within a week or so of it being bought.

I could never understand how the seller of the calf never seemed to miss a week selling at the market.

 

[Beefysheeps]

Is it worth contacting the farm it came from and give them a heads up? I should imagine you'll have to be very careful how you'd approach it though.

He’s going to know anyway as he/she will also be shutdown too now

Yes that’s exactly it and kind of partly why I did put the post up.
We kind of all in this sort of situation together, but how are we ever going to get our points out there when we have to be scared about what others are going to do, I just feel that we probably need to fight sometimes a little bit more, to show the sides rather than sitting behind a curtain. But that’s totally it it’s doing it carefully! It sure is a difficult one.

 

[Sid]

Has been talk of raising the 42 days without a PMT upwards.

Hope this doesn't put a kibosh on it.

 

[Beefysheeps]

One of the few cases of TB confirmed on this farm occured in very similar circumstances.
Luckily we had our our annual test within a week or so of it being bought.

I could never understand how the seller of the calf never seemed to miss a week selling at the market.

Yes that is very similar then, we tend to normally only buy off of one farm, all of our milk rearing calves.
But now due to the sexed Semun they are getting less and less so we are having to buy from the farms. And now as a result this. But it could’ve happened from The Farm that we’ve always bought from otherwise so I’m not blaming the new farm.

 

[Beefysheeps]

Has been talk of raising the 42 days without a PMT upwards.

Hope this doesn't put a kibosh on it.

How do you mean Sid? Meaning that they could be older than the 42 days before needing to be tested?
Bit of a worry if so maybe On both sides one being the test is not ideal, and also meaning if they are carrying it so rife as like this one is..more chance of spreading it about more!

 

[Sid]

How do you mean Sid? Meaning that they could be older than the 42 days before needing to be tested?
Bit of a worry if so maybe On both sides one being the test is not ideal, and also meaning if they are carrying it so rife as like this one is..more chance of spreading it about more!

Yes moving the required PMT (premovement test) moving to say 60 days.

TBH the infection is highly likely to have come through milk. If that's the case the if the calf moves before 42 days or even at 70 days the infection has already taken place.

 

[Beefysheeps]

Yes moving the required PMT (premovement test) moving to say 60 days.

TBH the infection is highly likely to have come through milk. If that's the case the if the calf moves before 42 days or even at 70 days the infection has already taken place.

That is quite a worry then, to be honest with how things are I kind of am swinging towards the part of it should surely be there tested from any age if they’re moving farms, but maybe there is a part I’m not understanding there that would be a complete nightmare. I don’t know. But it kind of seems backwards if they’re increasing it when that it’s already present in younger days. Rare or not.

 

[Sid]

That is quite a worry then, to be honest with how things are I kind of am swinging towards the part of it should surely be there tested from any age if they’re moving farms, but maybe there is a part I’m not understanding there that would be a complete nightmare. I don’t know. But it kind of seems backwards if they’re increasing it when that it’s already present in younger days. Rare or not.

It's very very rare in young calves.
Someone told me the exact figure but I can't remember it now.

 

[roscoe erf]

Yes unfortunately

 

[richy]

I had 40 calves lost to tb a few years ago. All beef calves were reared on whole milk 1 cow milk was being used for calves as she calved with 1 hard quarter and didn’t want her causing a scc problem. Thankfully I was rearing the replacement heifers on milk substitute

 

[Beefysheeps]

It's very very rare in young calves.
Someone told me the exact figure but I can't remember it now.

I phoned up Defra Earlier to try and find this out, and thou she was really helpful she actually couldn’t answer, I spoke to the scientific vet after her as my details was passed on to her, she also couldn’t answer it and told me I need to look on their website, I did say do you not know as you have all of the figures you must know who you’re issuing these green tags to, I mean at the end of the day you have every single log and the details of where every single cow has gone. So therefore you will have the ages also. And also you’re asking me to use your website when you don’t know what’s on it, she did see the funny side, as I was not being rude in what I was saying, And said even she struggles to find stuff on there, and it would take a very long time.
So to be honest I don’t hold much hope of finding this all last years numbers of such cases. But it would’ve been good to have known is something to add to making a point about this if I did.

 

[Beefysheeps]

I had 40 calves lost to tb a few years ago. All beef calves were reared on whole milk 1 cow milk was being used for calves as she calved with 1 hard quarter and didn’t want her causing a scc problem. Thankfully I was rearing the replacement heifers on milk substitute

Oh God that must’ve been awful, that’s a lot all at once!!

 

[C.J]

Local rumour about a herd , that has lost over a hundred cattle , in the last 2 years , is that the calves were all reared on the dump milk.

 

[Beefysheeps]

Local rumour about a herd , that has lost over a hundred cattle , in the last 2 years , is that the calves were all reared on the dump milk.

I could believe it, I mean it all gets mixed in together and then the calves have it shared out so easily done, but the way it’s always been done also. Tbh.

Utterly crappy but one part that if I did go public with any of this that’s the type of stuff that I would need to be careful How would be worded. As the main point is I would not be looking to cause more problems.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

I could believe it, I mean it all gets mixed in together and then the calves have it shared out so easily done, but the way it’s always been done also. Tbh.

Utterly crappy but one part that if I did go public with any of this that’s the type of stuff that I would need to be careful How would be worded. As the main point is I would not be looking to cause more problems.

It doesn't matter how carefully you word something, once it is in front of 'hacks', it will get butchered.
But in all honesty, I doubt anyone would be interested in it at all.

 

[Beefysheeps]

It doesn't matter how carefully you word something, once it is in front of 'hacks', it will get butchered.
But in all honesty, I doubt anyone would be interested in it at all.

Very true, and also on the last part, yeah I’m more than doubt that will be the case, it’s not the first and it’s nowhere near going to be The last of them.

But at least I just feel like I’m doing a possibility of something? showing at least one person what happens in the actual barn, rather than what some troll says behind a key board.
we get nothing but stick in the limelight in most ways possible lately. nothing that any of us do as a farmer is ever in 99% of peoples eyes/as in the public, shown in a good way, thou snow season is coming up so guess we’re get credit their..
but!. We rear animals to just kill them, so when this happens we should lump it! (Most comments said on any posts about this)
“Latest”We don’t have the staff to kill/butcher pigs is another..so dammit, we are just told to shot them, and dump them in a hole (off subject, but again a farmers dig) oh and while doing all this were damaging the environment.

Being angry about it, nope I’m not grabbing a box of Kleenex because this calf is going to have to be put down, I’ve been brought up around Livestock and dead stock, I’m a little bit harder than that,
It’s just the point that I would like to get across that this issue with TB needs to be sorted and taken a little bit more serious, and while it’s been put more in the limelight as of recently (Geronimo) this is just a possibility of something to give it a little bit more of a kick towards someone finding a more sensible solution.
And no I’m not looking at dealing with it like she did, just quite simply showing the part of what actually goes on, and then the end results.. as if it comes back negative! it’s again not going to look very good that they’re putting down such a young and healthy calve. Unnecessarily.

(And incase, Don’t take that as a rant at you for your comment, just in case, as I know how easily comments can come across different to what that they’re meant. It was just to put my point across to why and what I was thinking, but I agree maybe I am wasting my time)