Cattle Health

She could be resting near her calf, expecting another one on the way (which is extremely rare, by the way), or is experiencing some other illness that only your vet should try to diagnose for you, like milk fever, ketosis, grass tetany, or temporary paralysis.

Mastitis is inflammation from injury or infection, what commercial operations do to prevent this is every they milk, they dip the teats in iodine and they also wipe them off and sterilize them before milking as well, there is no way to stop it from happening but that is one way to minimize it. To treat it, it depends on the severity of the injury. You could let the cow heal by its self or you can treat it with antibiotics.

It's hard to tell what you're trying to ask because either you may be referring to feeding the calf roughage, or "eating" milk. The calf will be able to eat the roughage if it's hungry enough, as many a thrifty calf with intense curiousity (as is with most calves) will find the hay and grain to eat on its own.

As for the milk, that's a different story. You will have a harder time getting a calf to drink from a bottle or bucket than one that is newborn because he will be very used to suckling from his momma but not from a bottle. Even the taste of the milk replacer isn't the same as the milk straight from his momma. Either way, you will have to restrain him, and try to get him to suckle from a bottle at first. You can't do it by yourself, as you will need someone to help you hold him while you teach him to accept the bottle or bucket. It will take a while for him to get used to it, so be persistant and don't give up.

No.

Water belly is another term for urinary stones that have formed in the bladder or kidneys or both. These calculi are comprised of clumped up mineral salts and tissue cells that block the urinary passage, disabling the animal to urinate properly, if at all. This condition is far more common in steers and bulls than cows or heifers. Water belly occurs most frequently in steers when they are between 5 and 18 months of age. It is more common in feedlot animals than those out on pasture.

Water belly is often caused by consuming an unbalanced quantity of certain minerals. Any minerals that are in excess in an animal's diet are filtered out by the kidneys and excreted as urine. Any minerals that are in high saturation in an animal's diet can lead to urine crystallization. Any animals that are short on water can develop very concentrated urine.

The term water belly stems from what happens when the bladder ruptures if a stone is blocking the urethral passage. The urine flows into the abdominal cavity, and though it causes temporary relief for the animal, the toxins from the urine cause swelling under the belly skin toward the chest. Toxins that had been filtered out of the body by the kidneys are not being reabsorbed back into the bloodstream and slowly poisoning the animal to death. He usually becomes dull, stops eating, and may go into shock or become weak. Death usually occurs 48 hours after the bladder has ruptured.

Their digestive systems are built to handle forages and roughage and use them adequately for their bodily functions. Certain microbes in the digestive system help break down the fibrous material, and the four different chambers in the stomach help with processing the forages in four different stages within that stomach. Cows don't get sick eating grass, they never have and never will.

Antiquality factors such as bloat, fescue toxicity, grass tetany and nitrate toxicity come up but that's mostly associated with the quality or lack there of in the grasses that make them sick. Bloat is caused by high levels of protein in the young grasses or in legumes, and mostly caused by turning animals out on a fresh pasture when they are hungry. Fescue toxicity is caused by a fungus (ergot) that is commonly grown in Tall Fescue, and makes for foot, ear, and tail gangrene in cattle if eaten in excess. Grass tetany is a lack of magnesium in the grass, which, in the cow, leads to symptoms of magnesium deficiency which kills quickly if not treated quickly. Nitrate toxicity occurs after a bad case of frost or drought and nitrates build up in the grasses. Too much nitrate in the cow causes illness which also needs to be treated immediately.

But as for grass being just grass without the antiquality factors I mentioned, ruminants were always designed to eat grass. It's just the way they've evolved over thousands and thousands of years.

1. Keep up a good herd health program

2. Keep records for breeding, calving, health, weaning and selling

3. Provide good quality feed, forage and mineral at all times

4. Provide access to fresh clean source of water

5. Provide shelter from the elements

6. Handle cows and bulls calmly and responsibly.

Additionally, you should remember an animal's five freedoms:

1. Freedom from disease

2. Freedom from fear

3. Freedom to express normal behaviour

4. Freedomg from hunger and thirst

5. Freedom from discomfort.

Depending on your area and climate and your management practices, when having cattle in a drylot where feed is fed in feeders and not out in a pasture, you should provide clean bedding such as straw for animals to keep them from freezing and getting frostbitten udders or scrotums. Pens should also be cleaned out annually (or as many times as necessary) to keep manure from building up too much.

Good handling practices is also a key to keeping your cattle healthy. Stress causes the immune system to decrease functionality, which in turn increases an animal's of getting sick and contracting some form of disease. Stress also reduces productivity in animals from milk quantity to meat quality.

A young calf fed a diet too high in energy or by consuming too much grain at once may cause it to founder or get laminitis, especially in dairy calves that are placed on a milk-replacer diet with calf-starter feed of mostly grains.

Blackleg. There may also be a bacterial strain of pneumonia that could kill a calf in less than 24 hours, but Blackleg is most likely the prime suspect.

Mastitis: this is an infection of the udder, you cannot ship milk that is infected with mastitis

Milk fever: after the cow has given birth, she is putting all the calcium in her body into the milk, leaving her deficient in calcium.

A prolapse cow be exposed to what? A bull? Well, as soon as she's healed up and as soon as she is back to normal again, which can take as long as a week to a whole month. So don't be in a hurry to "expose" a prolapsed cow to anything. As a matter of fact, I would probably ship her because there's a likely chance that once she's done it, she may do it again.

Melanosis in cattle is cause from an accumulation of melanin in body organs. It is common for calves to have this for the first year of their live.

Pneumonia is the most likely reason. Check to see if she has a temperature to see if she's running a fever. If it's just pneumonia (like what is typical of Bovine Respiratory Disease), then give her a shot of antibiotic. The best ones to choose from are Nuflor, Draxxin, Excenel, Baytril, Excede or Micotil. The most common and most effective ones for BRD are the first three mentioned.

I think that cow bane grows in southern Illinois. I need to know when it would bloom and what part of it is poisonous.

Cows usually live to about 15 years (occasionally as much as 25 years). The record for the oldest living cow was Big Bertha who reached the age of 48 in the 1990's.

No, the slaughter withdrawal time is usually 21 days after the last injection.

Could be a number of reasons: lice, ringworm (a type of dermal fungi), mange, etc.

You haven't been exposed to blackleg (a Clostridial bacterial infection) as the vaccine is a killed vaccine, but it would be a good idea to keep a close watch on how you feel for the next week and watch the accidental injection site as well. If you start to run a fever or notice swelling, redness or pain around the injection site, see a human doctor immediately and let them know this was an accidental needle stick from a cattle vaccine.

could be pregnant get a vet to check it out or it could be sick

Mastitis in cows is inflammation of the udder. Infection is caused by many types of bacteria: Streptococcus spp., Staphylococcus spp., Klebsiella spp., etc. Mastitis develops when a quarter is contaminated from the outside environment, where pathogens enter the teat canal. Mastitis may be also caused by bruising and trauma to the udder if the udder has been bumped and bruised. The damaged tissue creates ideal conditions for an infection to develop even if there's no break in the skin for pathogens to enter from. Also, if a cow has an infection elsewhere in her body and bacteria and white blood cells and such are circulating through her bloodstream, they may start to multiply and create a serious infection in the bruised mammary tissue. Mastitis is more common in dairy cows because of two things: more quantity and complexity of mammary tissue, and a larger udder is more easily bruised than a small one typical of beef cows. Beef cows may also become susceptible to mastitis especially when her calf is weaned, and there is no calf to releave the pressure in her udder for several days. If the cow is active during this time, bruising is more likely to develop in the full, tight and sore udder.

Io

None. There are no salt blocks available that are specifically made to treat for pneumonia. If you need to treat an animal for pnuemonia, you need to try to find some way to get those cows or cattle in to a squeeze chute or head gate so you can give them some antibiotics. Nuflor, Resflor, Draxxin, Excenel or Excede are some options you can choose from to treat your animals with pneumonia.