More Help Needed w/ Jersey

[Tango]

To jog your memories: Abby is a 5 year old Jersey I purchased in November from a buyer. She went through the auction and I don't know who the seller was, except it was one of the smaller dairies in the area. She wears a Bayer's tag, a numbered tag, and a Bang's tag. There is absolutely no reason to believe she was passed on with a known illness. At the time it was disclosed that her calf was dead and had to be pulled and that she was five years old. She was given a Baldie to raise two weeks after losing her own calf and sent to market. Since I bought her, she's been seen by two different vets for a total of 3 times since November. Has been OB checked twice with nothing abnormal noted by vet. Abby has been raising a baldie calf that is a shiny butterball; Shorty is 5 months old now and approx. 400 pounds. She doesn't have enough milk for Shorty and me but Shorty is getting plenty. While Abby is a large Jersey weighing 950 pounds her udder is small. She has upright posture and the cattlemen who have seen her comment that she looks very good for her age.

I've dewormed her twice with Cydetin pour on. She was tested for BVD and Johnes and both blood tests came back negative. Her Johnes fecal has not yet returned but her symptoms are subsiding.

Right now her only symptom is scouring. It is very runny but not projectile. Her coat has gotten shinier and she hasn't lost anymore weight. She may have gained a little in the past month but her body score is pretty much a 1 for dairy cows - no fat reserves, but has energy. Eyes bright, no discharges anywhere. Her appetite has improved and she's more animated in general. She willingly comes when called But the scouring will not stop

I'm looking for more advice so that I can continue to pick her vets' brains. What might be going on with her? I realize that the fecal is still out and that it might still be Johnes but am looking for other possibilities since I don't just want to sit and wait for the test results. Thanks in advance.

[ericakc]

Could it be just lots of green grass recently?

[JeffNY]

One other possibility is BVD. Try this, and we did this with a Jersey of ours. She ate to much of one of those tank licks (has liquid in them), and scoured. She was ----ing a solid stream. Her production went from 50lbs a day to 5-10. So what we did was leave her inside, put a bale in front of her, and just kept giving her dry hay, not high quality, simply dry hay. No grain.. After a week her production was up, the runs had stopped.


So isolate her, to where she is forced to eat hay, give her as much as she can handle, along with water. She might not like it, but tough, she'll eat it. Her loose manure should subside with this diet, and her production should come up. What sounds like to me is she has Acidosis, which is when they eat too much fine feed, not enough fiber. So their manure gets runny, and they will drop in production and can loose weight. This can happen with herds that are fed a TMR. The TMR isn't mixed with enough long fiber, so all it does is run through them. Like I said, this could take a week. So be patient.


Jeff

[Tango]

I should have mentioned the symptoms she had before, and that initially concerned me, that have now cleared up: lethargy, dull short coat, lack of appetite, along with scouring. While all the cows are experiencing loose greenish manure at present, none are scouring and none had the previous symptoms Abby had.
Jeff, she was tested for BVD and it came back negative. She'd been on hay all winter. I took her off grain with the same rationale you just mentioned.

[wr]

Tango, did you check the cornell vet site. I'm at work and don't have it handy but you can search by symptoms or by disease/condition name. Perhaps you might find some answers there.

[JeffNY]

Have you listened to her rumen? Usually you can hear it work with your own hearing. If that isn't working right, it can cause problems. I had a heifer freshen in December, she was getting thinner and thinner. Her rumen wasn't working properly. Slowly she came around, and is fine now, conditioned back nicely.


Remember every animal can be different, so anything is possible. Try some kayopectate. Probably will take quite a bit, but give her 60CC a couple times a day, for 4-5 days. See if that helps at all.



Jeff

[sycamore]

If you have a fertrell mineral dealer near you (www.fertrell.com) get some of their Rumicult. We give this to our cows when they go on spring pasture and get the "runs". It balances the rumen among other things.
Good to know the tests are coming back negative. The fecal still could come back positive, but if her coat is improving something is helping.
To help, you could wean shorty now. 400lbs at 4 months is a nice big boy. Or atleast wean him off her and still give him some milk in a bucket.
Then you can cut back her production a tad and not push her so hard which would help her body condition.

[Tango]

That Cornell site is nice, thanks for the tip. Didn't see anything there though. Was thinking maybe something else but so far Johnes does seem to fit her only symptom I appreciate all the advice. Shorty is going to market pretty soon. I'm worried that his disappearance will cause her some stress since she is so attached to him though. I've been trying to keep her stress minimal. I've only got a few cows and they get quite a bit of individual attention throughout the day. Does anyone know of withdrawal problems from some of the stuff she may have been given at a dairy or would that all have gone through her system by now?

[wr]

Tango, I do find that cattle I've bought that were on silage took almost a full year to readjust to my hay program. The first couple times I purchased cattle from locations that were on a silage program, I thought they were going to die. They tended to be thin, poor doing and generally just looked terrible. No vets could give me any answers and I tried many of the same things you did. I did find that it takes pretty well a full feeding cycle (dry winter feed, green grass, dry winter feed) before I saw any change at all. This may not apply to you because I'm not as sure that you are as seasonally affected by feed. One thing I did find to help was a bit of beet pulp or calf manna to help them sustain their weight during the cold weather.

[Tango]

You've given me a little ray of hope wr. Thank you I don't know what the feeding program might have been but silage is not uncommon. The farms I see around me do not have grass to support stock through winter without supplemental feeding:hay, corn, protein blocks... probably silage as well. This past year our pastures didn't do so well due to lack of rain. Some people were supplementing already in September. Hay was very hard to find and priced considerably higher than the previous year. A cow not doing well at a dairy would be culled quicker than on a better year I would think.

I changed hay four times this winter due to the shortages; no one did as poorly as Abby. I cut off her grain entirely and I thought for a big Jersey, I wasn't giving her enough calories but grain caused more scouring. Now with the grass coming up, she is looking a tiny bit better and I've started her on a 16% mare and foal all grain. So far she is responding better to it than she did in January.

[bumpus]

.
Her gut system is all torn up. Some cattle have what is called nervous stomach.

I have had calves this way also.

Stop all grain and feed all dry hay, no alpha and no clover, just orchard grass for a few a week and she will tighten up then give her a little corn, which is energy, Small amount to start just for taste.

She does not need a lot of protein right now. Protein is for growing and she is not going to grow any more.
Corn is 8-9 percent and so is cheap hay.

You can add a little corn at a time once a week but not to much.

Slowly she will straighten up.

Be patient ... Give her to much and she will never straighted up.


bumpus
.

[wr]

Bumpus, I do agree with you on a grass hay rather than a hot hay. I can't comment on corn at all since it's almost never fed up here but in these cases, I find the beet pulp or manna low in fat but high in serviceable protein. Both simply products I'm familiar with.

Tango, the silage is such a hot feed, used in her case to promote maximum milk production and up here to promote additional fat stores to protect against our winters but like a human, if we totally change our diet, we do need time to adapt to the new situation. In her case, I keep thinking you've added a great deal of roughage/fiber to her diet which could be the cause of the scouring you're seeing.

[bumpus]

.
What ever I know it works for me.

.

[Tango]

Okay thanks. I can leave her on grass alone, as I had been doing. Don't know if I would be able to find hay right now... let alone afford it, but I can reduce the grain altogether again. My pasture has a little white clover in it but she was scouring when I bought her. This has been going on for 5 months. Just found a photo of her when I got her home and she looks a little better now but still very skinny.

[bumpus]

Originally Posted by Tango

Okay thanks. I can leave her on grass alone, as I had been doing. Don't know if I would be able to find hay right now... let alone afford it, but I can reduce the grain altogether again. My pasture has a little white clover in it but she was scouring when I bought her. This has been going on for 5 months. Just found a photo of her when I got her home and she looks a little better now but still very skinny.

She is not going to gain weight while she is making milk for her calf.

When the calf is taken away she will start to gain weight.

bumpus
.

[Tango]

Thanks Bumpus and wr. I appreciate your help. Thing is, she was skinny when I got her. Comparing her to my other Jersey, when Karma freshened, she was nicely conditioned. Perhpas being at a dairy, the animals don't get conditioned as well, but Abby was skinny back in November when she freshened. And she was scouring. Just trying to make sure we are on the same page here. I don't see how she will gain anything if she is scouring with or without her calf. She was on grass hay throughout winter (Bermuda or Fescue at different times) and she was still scouring. My hope is that, like wr says, she needs time to get junk out of her system.

[65284]

Tango, I once had a Dexter cow with the same symptoms you are describing. The vet checked everything much as you have done and with pretty much the same results. I was talking with someone at a booth at the Small Farm Trade Show and he suggested some kind of probiotics stuff he was selling. It wasn't terribly expensive and I had tried everything else with no luck so I bought some and it did the job. It has been several years ago and I don't remember the name of the company but a Google search for probiotic for cattle should turn up something.

[Tango]

Thanks 65284. I really appreciate all the help and advice. She's gaining weight, her eyes are like two shiny black diamonds, and her coat is shiny. She lost most of the coat she came with. Something is working right with her. I'm going to dry her up and let her have a the summer off and we'll see what this has all been about.

[piglady]

I have not tried it but I have heard if you have a pet cow in the herd that is healthy, take a wad of cud out of her mouth and give it to the sick cow. If the problem is getting her digestive system used to her new food, this cud will have all the bacteria etc. already adjusted to that environment. Probiotics do the same thing and can be purchased but they are not farm specific. Good luck.

[Tango]

I think I'll just stay with Probios but thank you for that tip. It is good to have some folk wisdom for reference. Actually Abby has been in a pen with a roll of fescue hay since Wednesday evening and her stools are tightening up some. Defintiely not watery runny anymore. And she has a lot of strength, proven by her attempts to push me into the panels in order to get out But she's always liked to do that. Her favorite game is to walk me into whatever tree or stationary object is in view Her adopted son Shorty, stays with mom all night long to keep her milked out, then he goes out with the gang and returns around 6 for the night. It is working out so far.