I know there have been a few conversations on this topic several years ago, but none seemed to address my problem. Two cows calved and owing to various reasons, they weren’t taken to join the milking herd for three days. They were milked once a day with a little mobile milking unit, but their calves were left with them due to the various reasons the cows were living it up in the calving pens. Anyhow, cows joined the milking herd and the calves taken to the calf house and put in individual pens. They were taken from their mothers around lunch time, no attempt was made to feed them until the following morning, when they both took a full feed. At the evening feeding, they refused the milk, but I wasn’t too concerned. Following morning they took their full feed again, refused again that evening, following morning took a full feed, and ever since, they’ve refused to feed. They look out of the pens like the other calves, looking like they’re hungry, and I think even roared looking to be fed. I’ve since been stomach tubing them (four days) and they’re showing signs of weakening. I’ve checked their navels, they don’t have pneumonia, and just last night, I saw the first signs of scour. I tuned them with electrolytes and gave them Bimastat which always works a treat on scour cases with us. They have their own feeding buckets, they’ve not been shared, but there aren’t any other calves with scour anyway. I’ve tried syrup on the teat which they liked but just licked off, I’ve stood in the pen holding their mouthes on the test, hoping the penny would drop, but nothing. Yesterday the vet gave me a drug (can’t remember the name) specifically to work on the sucking part of the brain. Still no luck and as I said, I ended up stomach tubing the electrolytes into them. The only upside to this is, they’re bull calves. Callous I know, but the prices are very poor here at present and even these fellows do recover, they have a huge amount of ground to make up and at this point they’re costing money. What concerns me though, is if there’s some underlying issue which may affect heifer calves too. Can anybody advise?
Calves stopping drinking.
- Thread starter LouD
- Start date
lazy farmer
Member
- Location
- som/dor border
white_stuffed
Member
I know how frustrating this can be. In our case it turned out to be calf diptheria. But it was the throat (laryngeal) sort (rather than the mouth sort with the swollen cheek popping out). I think the laryngeal version must be v.painful, like a sore throat. It seems to effect them at a very young stage. We use synulox injection for 3 days and it seems to work very quickly. We sometimes get a swollen cheek but that tends to be when they are bit older and a quick course of pen and strep sorts it out. I'll see if I can find the original thread so you can compare the symptoms...
white_stuffed
Member
Here they are...
Really good post from PP
@white_stuffed If you have had a problem with calf diptheria in the past, then from our own experience, I would say that although not the original problem it is multiplying the problems for the calf. We have found that it causes slightly off colour calves to start with that want to drink, take a small amount and then give up or just drink hesitantly, may breathe faster and cough a little but not really badly enough to think it is pneumonia and may have some scouring but again not enough to be the main problem. About 7 years ago, I had a week to 10 days of hell in a very cold spell in the January before I caught a calf continually chewing without swallowing the feed and realised what the problem might be and confirmed it with the vet. It was absolutely soul destroying as I thought I was 'ok' at the job and generally have very few losses but that time there were no symptoms that stood out. I lost one calf at the time although it took several others a little while to recover and had to have another shot later because it had the squeak in the voicebox that did not respond to treatment.
If you think how you feel when you have a sore throat it is obviously the same for the calf. Speak to your vet but for us Combiclav and painkillers work well.
Having said we have very few losses I almost lost a friesian heifer the other week who had scours and didn't respond to the usual treatments. The first time that I have done it but we took her to the vets on a Sunday morning and she was put on a drip and kept in overnight. Picked up the next morning, the difference was amazing and she has continued to do well so if I had similar concerns about a calf in the future I would not hesitate to do the same again.
Sparkymark
Member
I wouldn’t be stomach tubing milk into them, there refusing to drink for a reason.
They both were bottle-fed colostrum. We always do that even we see them sucking the cow, to be sure they get a minimum of 2.5 litres. A scour check might be an idea, but since they only started scouring last night, I don’t think that’s the reason they’re refusing milk. Anyway, on a brighter note, one calf took about 2/3 of his electrolytes under casual supervision- ie, I mostly watched him and guided him back to the test when he lost it. The other calf... Well.
Now that’s interesting. We don’t have squeaky voice boxes, nor are there any lumps under their jaws or swellings generally though, but everything else sounds familiar, even the slight cough. It can’t hurt to give them a shot of antibiotics. I’m not familiar with Combiclav, but it may be like Synulox or it’s generic Noroclav? Having already spoken to a mystified vet, I’m not sure how to swagger into the surgery asking for painkillers. The antis can easily be passed off for some other animal.
. Thank you so much for digging this up!Yes, I think the tubing is causing the scour. It’s annoying as it’s one more thing to knock them back a bit.
Have had the same issue with my last lot of AAx, no temp, go off afternoon feed but drink from teats happily in the morning and then electrolytes in warm water which they love, at this stage they are quite lively. Had 3 pm’s with nothing found!. The scour comes after a few days but not always. Vet mystified, tubing with milk (not colostrum) is not recommended, electrolytes fine but it is hard to do nothing. Most have survived but have lost a few.
Two litres twice a day. We sometimes feed sick calves smaller feeds three times a day, but with these calves, it was pointless, they absolutely refused to drink. An update however- the sickliest calf died. He was small so we suspect he may have been a little premature. We had a TB test the week he was born which likely resulted in him appearing before schedule. The other calf is now taking two full feeds twice a day, after being treated with antibiotics and anti inflammatories as suggested up-thread- which may or may not have contributed to his recovery, but on balance, faced with something similar again, I’d not hesitate to use them. Thank you to those who suggested it. We also gave him Vitamin B which may or may not have helped too. He’s a bag of bones and it’ll be a long time before he’s in any state for selling, but I regard him as a learning tool!
These two calves wouldn’t even drink electrolytes. I’ve reared thousands of calves and I’ve never seen anything like this. Interesting your PMs didn’t show anything. It’s very vexing when you can’t have a conclusive answer.
Likewise I am not too sure what worked, Betamox was a waste of time and eventually I used Synulox bolus, AS mix ( has pectin) electrolyte in the morning milk because they were drinking and then my homemade version at lunchtime and evening in buckets as they would not take commercial brands or suck. Hopefully it is a one off but I will remember the Vits if there is a next time
Thank you for posting
Thank you for posting- Location
- somerset
isolate, check, if 'ill' don't want whatever to spread, 1st loss could be the cheapest, esp if dairy bulls. I often wonder if calves that don't 'go', if calving several at the same time, have been stood on, have seen calves stood on by cows, that basically just go backwards, nothing one can do about that.
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
What breed are these? 2 l twice a day is very little milk, if a HF x. Fair enough if a smaller breed. Once a calf is weak then they are even less likely to drink and once they are underfed their immune system stops working properly. If they are underfed then (even without scour) they get dehydrated and go weak and have no motivation to feed. I hate tubing calves and it is usually a last resort for me, but sometimes when I've done it, the next day I have a different calf on my hands because they have rehydrated.
All our HF x beef calves are on 3.75 litres twice a day if they will take it (and 95% do) from day two. 2 litres just does not give them enough energy. They are on 10 litres a day by week 4.
We occasionally get a light white scour which we have had tested and it comes back negative for the main diseases, but it is infectious (not nutritional) as it tends to come in a wave - 4 or 5 calves at once and then nothing for weeks. They are off their feed partially for about 3 days but in my case that means they are drinking say 4 litres a day rather than nearly 8. They have no temperature and do not look ill other than being a bit slow to come to feed, then playing with the teat, not drinking up and often going to lie down straight away after feeding. I don't normally tube nor even usually electrolyte them as it is not a bad scour but if I was feeding a lower baseline volume of milk or it went on longer than 3 days I would probably soon run into dehydration problems. Metacam is advised for scour and I rarely have to use it but would do (along with tubing milk and giving electrolyte) in worse cases.
All our HF x beef calves are on 3.75 litres twice a day if they will take it (and 95% do) from day two. 2 litres just does not give them enough energy. They are on 10 litres a day by week 4.
We occasionally get a light white scour which we have had tested and it comes back negative for the main diseases, but it is infectious (not nutritional) as it tends to come in a wave - 4 or 5 calves at once and then nothing for weeks. They are off their feed partially for about 3 days but in my case that means they are drinking say 4 litres a day rather than nearly 8. They have no temperature and do not look ill other than being a bit slow to come to feed, then playing with the teat, not drinking up and often going to lie down straight away after feeding. I don't normally tube nor even usually electrolyte them as it is not a bad scour but if I was feeding a lower baseline volume of milk or it went on longer than 3 days I would probably soon run into dehydration problems. Metacam is advised for scour and I rarely have to use it but would do (along with tubing milk and giving electrolyte) in worse cases.
We freeze colostrum in 3 litre containers and every calf which is born, is bottle fed 3 litres almost always within about two hours of birth. We don’t stomach tube the colostrum if we can help it, and out of close to 300 calvings in 2020, I think there have only been three tubed. They did alright though, it didn’t set them back.
Sorry, pressed post before I was finished!
Calves are reared in individual pens until about six weeks old. Sometimes the demand on pens means they might only get four weeks before being moved into group pens with teat bars. Some calves are reared in hutches until they’re three or even four months old when they’re weaned and moved into group pens. Calves in hutches and individual pens don’t share buckets, and all buckets are rinsed with almost boiling water and hyperox after each feed. We have trouble with feral cats and keeping the buckets free of all traces of milk is the only way to stop them climbing into buckets with dirty paws. We have trapped and had our vet dispatch a good number of them over the years and while there aren’t so many now, they still keep appearing.
- Location
- somerset
we froze 84 2litre bottles of colostrum, for a neighbour who has a 'small' johnes problem, and he will be back for more when the spr block starts, not sure i'd want that size problem. For ourselves, we store colostrum, acidify, and feed our calves on it, and do not buy powder. There has been a direct reaction to xbreeding, in tubing fresh calves with colostrum, basically stopped, very very few calves get tubed at birth, usually for a 'reason', such as hfr calved in scrape passage, calf dirty cold and wet. Freely admit not to much effort goes into dairy bull calves, but we don't lose many, and not many overall. Calves from the xbreds are more 'robust', plenty of get up and go, rather different to the hols we used to have. I can remember using tubing, for the first time here, dad and cowman, totally horrified by the action, definitely not approving, yet as we became more hol, tubing became common place, nice to regress back though, tubing is just another tool in the armoury, there if we need it.