Pneumonia Disaster

[mac]

Best hanging fire till you find out what you fighting. I’ve been where you are and it’s not great. We’ve had runs like that in the past with bought in calves to the point we gave it up and now buy yearlings or older instead. We tried micotil draxxin now we use alamycin and a drop of metacalm if we get bother which we do but not near as bad. Our home bred calves have also been a problem for years been vaccinating for ibr rsv pi3 pasturella still had bother. Then we started looking through old lab reports common theme IBR. Then we tested a sample of cows some that had calves with pneumonia some that have calves die from pneumonia and some that had healthy calves so from the results now we vaccinate the cows and after 3 years I’d say it’s starting making a difference to our calf health. So maybe you need to look at that.

Mac

 

[bruce9001]

How are your calves?

Thankfully all the ones we went through yesterday are all looking fine now and put them in a pen on there own!

Had a few more this morning that needed treating and will check back tonight!

Hopefully get the PM results back tomorrow, and if it is Viral probably find it is spread throughout all of them to various degrees

 

[Raider112]

We had a bad outbreak of IBR a few years ago, spread to all points of the farm really quickly. My money is on IBR but they don't sound just as ours were.

 

[jemski]

Thankfully all the ones we went through yesterday are all looking fine now and put them in a pen on there own!

Had a few more this morning that needed treating and will check back tonight!

Hopefully get the PM results back tomorrow, and if it is Viral probably find it is spread throughout all of them to various degrees

Glad you've got on top of it. It's a horrible feeling - I had it with ewes in the spring and I dreaded walking round them each end of the day.

 

[Northeastfarmer]

@bruce9001 did you get the results of the post mortems back? IBR?

 

[bruce9001]

@bruce9001 did you get the results of the post mortems back? IBR?

Sorry late reply.

Got results back at the start of the week and no IBR or virus was found.

Both had Pasturella found tho, and after discussing with the vet we have decided it is just bacterial which is causing our problems (thankfully behind us now)

After discussing it looks like lots of things all at once causing bad outbreak.

Weaned them, and handled them to clip them, worm them and dehorn about 40 out of 160 had stressed them out but this was at the same time the weather turned really really bad here which has just been enough to set of a chain of events leading to the outbreak.

The first ones we had to treat were ones that got dehorned and they would of passed enough of the bacteria on to the others which had to be treated few days after.....

If had treated blanket with alamycin at the start probably would of knocked it all on the head as Pasturella responds very well to AB but hindsight is a great thing and I personally have never dealt with pneumonia that bad before or spreading that fast.

 

[bruce9001]

On another note - can you vaccinate for Pasturella in calves etc for next year ???
Or is it a case of maybe weaning and leaving for a week then handling them eta and trying to reduce the upheval
Meant to ask vet but forgot

 

[Lovegoodstock]

Yes can vaccinate, fairly cheap, well very cheap in comparison to losing one let alone more, just extra hassle doing it, sub cub injection, done twice 3 weeks apart. In my opinion and sure all will agree, don't do the job lot in one go, re weaning trimming and certainly the de horning. Don't just leave a week to de horn leave it longer, the stress of going through the crush bad enough but to be held there 5/10 mins to numb then cheese wire, I forgot age of calves so presuming cheese wire is a recipe for disaster, the benefits of trimming I would have thought will be far outweighed by the increased stress levels of being done post weaning. Just wondering why don't you de horn them as calves? Not a dig but a pet hate of mine is cattle not de horned, buy in 10/20 outfits a year, never de horned and drives me up the wall, 20 minutes when they are young would get a dozen done, less anaesthetic used, less time, and way less stress on animal.

 

[puppet]

We castrate with rings after birth then dehorn at least a month before housing then wean 4 weeks after that. Calves get used to be away through a creep gate and the cows get used to it. They are fed outside on a yard so plenty air and calves get onto straw in a high shed.

 

[M-J-G]

Debudding at birth would potentially be a way to avoid such trauma.