Treating milk fever ....

[Tamar]

Hi all,

When it rains it pours! Hmmm rather silly to say that when we have had no actual rain!

The calf mandie asked about in reference to scours..is doing wonderful, but her mother has come down with Milk Fever


We have the meds
I read so much on treating the cow subcutaneously that I thought I'd ask you all what you do.
Some places say to only administer 10cc's at one time..never use the site you used twice...some say its dangerous for a cow to get so much calcium...

I don't know the techinical names of her two meds...one is the calcium, the other is I think some sort of electrolyte.

They want 1/2 a bottle injected into her...that means 12 syringes full in either side of her neck!!!!!!!!!!

Any ideas...giving her IV at this point is not an option readily available to us.

Thanks for any advice,
blessings
Tamar

[Gin64]

Milk Fever happens within 48 hours of calving.If your cow is down a week or more after calving it aint milk fever.Giving her calcium at this point could kill her.CALL THE VET.

[SpringCreek]

You won't shock her system by giving her calcium subcutaneously--it'll enter her bloodstream slowly. You don't need to use multiple injection sites or use only 10 mL at a time.

You can, however, kill her by giving an IV too quickly. My vet advised me to wrap the IV tubing around her ear twice, and then hold it in the air. Basically, the higher above the needle site the bottle is held, the quicker the fluid flows. Wrapping it around her ear a couple times prevents you from getting it too high.

Here's a link with pictures and good instructions for the SC route: http://familycow.proboards32.com/ind...0336231&page=1

If she's really in bad shape, you may need to go with an IV, even if it means a vet call.

[sammyd]

I've never seen a vet wind the tube around an ear with an IV. Get it in and get it done.

In the really old days, they would inflate the udder with a bicycle pump. Never tried that myself though.

If the cow isn't just fresh you might want to get a second opinion on milk fever. Never seen one get it way after the calf came.

[dosthouhavemilk]

Cows can come down with milk fever at any stage in their lactation. Adeleine went down with milk fever at 8 months into a lactation. Dad didn't recognize it at first and so we called the vet (a rare thing here). Dad had figured it out before the vet arrived but the vet treated her. Big mistake. he was wanting to put two bottles of calcium IV into a cow that was still standing! Dad wouldn't let him. He put the second bottle sub-Q. The cow went down less than 12 hours later (duh...calcium overload). Dad treated her sub-Q with one bottle and she was fine.

At the school it wasn't uncommon for cows to go down a week after calving. Patricia was wobbly heading out of the barn after milking a week post calving. I mentioned to the assistant farmer that she looked like she was going to go down, but she wasn't put in the box stall. It was a week post calving.."cows don't go down that long after." Sure enough she was down flat out in the field the next morning.

A lot has to do with feeding and the individual cows. We rarely have cows go down after the first 48. But it has happened in the past 50 years dad has been milking. I've seen it on other farms.

As far as the 10 ccs sub-Q. There was a young female vet years ago that came out to treat a milk fever case (back before we started treating all of our own cases). She had learned that and so she was painstakingly putting 10 ccs in each spot sub-Q.
With the calcium sub-Q by the shoulders, you don't need to break it up that small. It is going in fairly slowly (not as slowly as IV is required to go in) and when done properly you are beween the layers of skin and the muscle. Skin is very elastic. It quickly works it's way down anyways. With Priscilla, you couldn't see where she had been treated less than five hours later.


You can overdose with calcium. They will flush the system of the calcium and go right back into milk fever again. This is why we prefer the slow release of sub-Q and only giving out cows one bottle and not the two that most vets insist on.

[SpringCreek]

Originally Posted by sammyd

I've never seen a vet wind the tube around an ear with an IV.

And that makes it bad advice from a vet who does? Takes all of five extra seconds....

Originally Posted by sammyd

Get it in and get it done.

Well, yes. How to go about getting it in and getting it done was the whole point of her question. How you go about it makes all the difference. Slamming a needle into her vein and dumping in calcium as fast as it'll go is a good way to kill a cow.

[Tamar]

Hi all,

Clippy is doing wonderful! She received 250ml of Dextrose solution (50%) and 250ml of Calcium Gloconate (23%)
and she is up and grazing and producing milk again for Zoey.

Thanks for your comments...espcially dousthouhavemilk...for we doest have milk again *grins*.

You were right, the local dairies around here have cows getting milk fever at all different times after calving, and they told us because we caught her so fast that she responded so good. We are keeping a close eye on her and zoey who totally recovered from scours and is bouncing all over with her mom.

Blessings to all,
Tamar