thanks for the link, I called them and left a message.

LFG, you might check with your local FSA office. There is a federal program that can help you recover livestock losses. I'm not sure if you can qualify because you have to be able to document your losses and tie it to a particular weather event. I think it is called the LIP program. It might at least be worth checking on.

LFG
Glad you have found answers to your problems, thanks for sticking it out here so every one could learn from them.

I only occasionally lurk here, but I would have been ticked off at the first two vets too. It is fine and dandy to say your feed program is lacking and say you need to check with a nutritionist, but the problem was that it contradicted what she was seeing (feed in front of the cattle although admittedly maybe not the best feed in the world). If that was all the vets said, maybe they should have gone on to explain the problem like the last vet.

Some of you all are implying that she was unwilling to accept advice, but obviously that is not the case. When told what the problem was with her feed, she corrected it quickly and even said they were going to send hay samples for testing, immediately and every year. That isn't an uncooperative, "bad" owner. It is an owner lacking knowledge. And, yeah, she probably should have specifically asked the first two vets what they thought might have been the problem with her feed program, but not everyone thinks that quickly on the spur of the moment. And why in the heck didn't they just tell her what the problem with her feeding program was if they were so darn knowledgeable. Even the third vet seemed to indicate that they should have handled it differently.

Now that she knows, it should not happen again and maybe she learned a better way to communicate with her vet.

When we had cows just lay down and die it was from "Blackleg" they would go from happy eating cows to dead in 6 hours! I lost 6 that year. Definately check your feed sounds like toxisity (sp) of some sort. Could even be your water so check that as well. So sorry for your losses. Livestock can be heart breaking :(

I havent had a chance to read all the posts between 1st and last page .. limited time on computer ...I see you have had your hay tested and you sent a beast off for post mortum
did they check for liver flukes?
maybe someone brought that up and I missed it
we had something similar happen about years ago ... we were in a region that wasnt suppose to be infected .. we think they were shed into our pastures by a cow that was brought in from out of state
it doesnt matter how good your forage is .. as we found out the hard way

P Hyde

Yes, I brought up the possibility of liver flukes because of the flooding. A couple of other earlier posters also mentioned liver. It takes a different wormer to deal with liver flukes. Flukes have moved into the OP's area in the last few years.ck

we are having a test done for that specifically. I did read the symptoms again. Problem is, none of our cattle have diarhea and the ones that died we cut them all open. they had normal looking livers.

lonelyfarmgirl

No recent death reports so I conclude all remains OK. When time permits read post #28 to refresh your recall. I believed then and I believe now that was the situation at your place, not insufficient feed, not a disease and not parasites. Their digestive system simply shutdown and they died from that and the associated stress.

lonelyfarmgirl

good glad actually others brought liverflukes up as an issue . and I missed it
I would like to point out when we had our issues with fluke , we didnt have issues with loose bowels , and the one person who could have quickly alerted me to the problem
was our proccessor who of coarse would have routinely seen at least my steers' livers
And for us it was a matter of time ( we estimated a period of at least 3 years that the problem was growing ... nothing like hindsight )
now at least once per year we give ivemec plus
I am glad to hear you are considering them as a possibility

I too thank LFG for having the courage to start this thread!

After reading it, I went out and bought my cows a lick tub. I'm not sure whether they really needed it, but they sure do like it! :)

Protien tubs out in my pasture now, too!

I've been reading and just "watching". I'm glad things are on back on track. But.... I would consider getting rid of the oats. I've heard old ranchers say that a cow could starve to death on oats. Not only that, oats and barley are grains, if you are trying to stay with pure grass-fed.

The other thing I want to point out is the failings of the two vets. Veterinarians do not have a lot of education in nutrition. Their training and education is in medical.

An example is that a rep from Land O' Lakes/Purina has more education and training in nutrition than a vet does.

However, after the first visit, I would have found a new vet.

Personally, I thought the cattle in the pics looked okay...

I've been around cattle all my life and seen this problem a couple times before. I think it's great that it is brought up in this forum for new cattle owners to see.

Good luck for your road to recovery....

The oats and barley were a temporary thing to help put some energy into their diets. It was what happened to be immediately available. We have slacked off on those. They are eating the ryelage we bought in. There are a few that I think look a little better, and quite a few that look the same. No one looks worse, except one. Our longhorn bull went down about a week ago. We have him in traction hanging from the ceiling.

He is standing much of the day on his own now and resting when he needs to. He is eating fine. We are going to let him in the straps for at least a week longer, maybe 2. We need to be absolutely sure that once we let him out, when he lays down, he will be able to get back up again.

Also, I talked to the new vet about liver fluke testing. He said they would have to send a fecal to the lab in Madison for the test, and no guarantee the results would be accurate. He said each cow sheds different amount of eggs, and it scuews tests.
Also found out the only way to treat is by injection or drench. How do you inject or drench an untouchable animal with a 3 1/2 foot rack?

We also wondered, if we have liver flukes, wouldn't their livers be messed up? I looked at some photos online, and all the livers were really gross looking. Since this mess all started, we have sent 4 to the butcher, and we lost 8 adult animals. All had normal looking livers.

New vet also said, it had been so long since they saw a case of liver flukes, she wasn't even sure how to test or what to treat it with.

In case it hasn't been mentioned, protein tubs can be deadly to goats. So if anyone has those don't use anything with Urea.

Why is the longhorn in straps, I am assuming he couldn't stand on his own?? Has the good vet been out to see him, and if so what does he think??

Allene

Golly, I hate to mention this but I recently watched a YouTube video of cows that were watering from an area where Natural Gas Fracking is being done...did you have your water tested and is there anything like that going on around you, drilling, fracking, etc.???

Allene

LFG, sounds as though you have now got things in hand although it's going to be a long haul.

Liver Fluke is something that I am unfortunately very familiar with but it can be a hard thing to detect in cattle as some deal with it very well, others fall over, others show oedema but are in otherwise good health.

One of the first physical signs of Fluke is oedema under the jaw which rapidly becomes quite enlarged. The cow may otherwise be in good condition. For younger cattle or those stressed by feed or pregnancy, they then start to lose condition and eventually will go down. Other cattle will show no further problems other than the oedema but will be severely compromised if other stress factors come into play at any time.

There are blood and milk tests now available to test for this parasite.

I suspect that I have more drenches available to me than you probably have but all of them are very expensive. There is an oral drench available here called Fascimex (I think), a pour-on called Genises-Ultra (very expensive and very good) and I believe there is an Ivomec Injectable that deals with it too.

And yes, it does affect the liver very badly - I have seen them so congested with Fluke you wouldn't believe it. They look like dead pitasporrum leaves, grey and move and just choke all the tubes in the liver. I also have it in my sheep and drench accordingly.

Much of our stock water comes from drains, dams and the river and we are slowly getting troughs into all paddocks to encourage stock away from these other water sources. This won't alleviate the problem entirely but it goes a long way to decreasing the incidence.

Keep on trucking:D

Cheers,
Ronnie

I looked up oedema and none of our cattle have that.
The vet is of the opinion the longhorn went down due to the same problem all the others have had. Why he was thus affected after we had the ryelage in the feeders for a week, I don't know.

No, no fracking around here. The worst we have is a few small quarries, and lots and lots of ag chemicals.

Have you had your well tested?? We truck water in here because of Ag runoff!

Allene

not recently. we had it tested a few years ago, and it was a little high in nitrates, but nothing more than that. probably wouldn't hurt to have it tested again, but if there is something there, its not killing the koi.

How is the bull doing???

I don't think I'd cut down on the supplemental feed until the whole herd is doing better or at least 'til you no longer have cattle going down. :(

It takes awhile for them to adjust to the higher quality feed. He was already on of the weakest from what I understood from your posts. He didn't have the strenghth to make it over the hump and adjust to the new feed.