Question re: Old and arthritic cow?

[willow_girl]

My darling Bitey is showing her age these days, I'm afraid!

She seems to be sore in her hips/pelvis/back, especially when she first gets up. I think it is arthritis. Back in the day, she had a HUGE bag, and I'm sure toting it around put a strain on the joints in that part of her body. On the dairy, she always moved very carefully, although she improved greatly, for quite awhile, after being dried off (her bag shrunk amazingly!) and put on dirt floors rather than concrete.

I'm wondering if there's anything I can give her that might make her feel better (besides a bucket of sweet feed, LOL!). I've heard of people giving arthritic old horses MSM or glucosamine chondroitin. Anyone ever tried it on a cow? (My first concern, of course, is to do no harm.)

I'm thinking I could also get a balling gun and give her the occasional aspirin bolus. Don't want to do that too often, of course, for fear of ulcerating her rumen.

Just makes me so sad to see her shuffling around (I'm sure it isn't a foot problem; I just had her trimmed recently and her hooves were sound). Why does everything I love have to be so danged old?!

[Lannie]

I don't know about cows (mine's not quite 2 yet), but my husband, a horse and one old dog used to have bad arthritis until I took them off corn. The horse was really bad, and her liver was shot as well, and she was losing weight at a terrifying rate. It's a long, technical story, but I finally tracked it down to the corn, so now we don't eat anything with corn in it, and I don't feed any of my animals corn. That includes horses, cow, chickens, dogs and cats. No trace of arthritis left in the dog, the horse, or my husband. The horse recovered 100%, gained all her lost weight back and acts like a 5 year old again (she's 27).

Most people don't believe me, and that's OK. But we don't have pain anymore.

~Lannie

[Ken Scharabok]

Lannie: Does that include the meat from any potentially corn-fed animal?

[Lannie]

Not the meat, Ken, but the fat. The mycotoxins in the corn go first to the fat, then to the joints.

~Lannie

[cindy04]

You can use Phenylbutazone (Bute) in cattle. Good stuff. I've used it in horses for years, and will use it on my Jerseys when they get old and sore.

There is a meat/milk withdraw, but I don't think that applies here.

Hope she feels better.

Cindy

[dezeeuwgoats]

I'm sold on the supplement Aniflex GL......It is for horses - everything in it is joint health and can be found in human supplements too. I've seen a dramatic difference - it seems to really help joint pain.

It also isn't super expensive, like some of the others. It is made by Animed. The ingredients are: glucosamine HCL, Ester C, Hesperidin, MSM, Creatine, yucca, vitamin E, hyaluronate, vitamin B1, B2, B6, and B12.

After researching all the ingredients and proper downsizing of dosage I've used it for dogs too. Great product. At ten dollars a pound - it is worth a try, if the above ingredients are safe for cows.

Niki

[JulieLou42]

Try everything we humans can take for it besides NSAID's.

Hyaluronic acid [HA for short]
hydrolized collagen
cetyl myristoleate/Celidrin [CMO for short]
MSM, glucosamine, chondroitin
boswellia, turmeric, ginger, sea cucumber
unflavored gelatin/Knox
Microlactin
[best alfalfa and hay]
[free minerals]

They produce their own Vitamin C; among mammals, only humans and guinea pigs do not. It's converted from Vitamin A in bovines.

These are the supplements that I use myself for my knees that need to be replaced. These seem to be helping me.

[willow_girl]

Thanks everyone!

[Doc]

I will post this here and see if I get replies, other than a new thread. I've sent a couple of you private messages.

My 10 yr old cow has torn cartilage, like tearing our ACLs, while being mounted by one the girls. After two rounds of banamine, vet came today to give me the bad news. Torn ligaments/cartilage in cows is not good -- now it is a matter of quality of life. He rec Bute, which is fine, but I'm also very interested in trying natural remedies (anti-inflammatories and anything that might help her for awhile, at least). I've got her on a diet to lessen the weight on that leg, but ANYTHING I can do/try, I will (within reason, of course) -- other than invasive surgery which the vet says doesn't really work.

JulieLou42: where do you find proportions for these natural remedies for a 1200 lb cow? I'd like to try some of them.

[Cheribelle]

I am a FIRM believer in MSM! It works.

[haypoint]

I see dozens of old dairy cows going to slaughter, each week. Seems sad. Sometimes they die on the way to slaughter. Common story. Farmer holds on to a cow, thinking he'll get just one more calf and a few more months of milk. At some point, she succumbs to old age. Farmer treats her with medications, dumps her milk, and hopes she gets better. But this time she isn't going to get better. However, since he's given her medication, he had to wait a couple weeks or a month, depending on the drugs used, before he can send her to auction. Poor ol' Bessy, that wasn't doing well with medication, must wait unmedicated. In that time period, she generally gets worse. A trip in an unfamiliar livestock trailer and then hustled thru the maze of stalls and strange cows and people adds to the stress. At days end she is herded into a double decker aluminum trailer. Looks like it could be slippery. A 400 mile trip would stress a young healthy cow. By days end, she's given up and her body has to be drug from the trailer. Dog food instead of Lean Cusien. But she doesn't care.

[Doc]

Those may be your cows going to slaughter, haypoint, but not mine. My question for this forum was how to treat the injury, not a lesson in going to slaughter.

[Ken Scharabok]

See if your local library can get a loaner copy of Herbal Handbook for Farm & Stable by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. Although arthritis isn't one of the illnesses she mentions, she does cover most others.

She has also authored at least three other books: The Illustrated Herbal Handbook, The Complete herbal Book for the Dog and Natural Rearing of Children.