Livestock
| FARMING NEWS | | | | Show tickets Get tickets for the Royal Welsh Smallholder and Garden Festival. Win a prize for inventing a gadget. Click here for more information | | LIVESTOCK | | | LAND | | |
|
|
|
Keep diarrhoea in check
NADIS (National Animal Disease Information Service) is a network of 59 veterinary practices and six veterinary colleges monitoring diseases in cattle, sheep and pigs in the UK.
This month Phil Scott DVM&S, DipECBHM, CertCHP, DSHP, FRCVS offers advice on diarrhoea or calf scour
DIARRHOEA or calf scour is a major cause of calf mortality and lost profit in many beef suckler herds. Financial losses result from dead calves, but more importantly from the severe check in growth of young calves.
Purchase of replacement calves risks introducing many disease organisms, most importantly Salmonella species, on to the farm.
Rotavirus infection
This is the most common cause of severe diarrhoea in young beef suckler calves. Infection can produce the complete range of clinical signs from no observed abnormality through to severe diarrhoea and dehydration with high mortality.
Calves 8-14 days old are most commonly affected with an acute onset of very watery yellow/green faeces rapidly spreading amongst the group. The calf rapidly becomes dehydrated and recumbent. Often the abdomen is distended with fluid and gas, the eyes sunken, and the skin tight and inelastic.
The calf should be isolated in a dry, well-bedded pen and one to two litres of oral electrolyte given two to four times daily. While a stomach tube/oesophageal feeder can be used once, veterinary advice should be sought if the calf will not suck fluids through a teat two to four hours later.
Intravenous fluids administered by a veterinary surgeon are essential in dehydrated calves that are unable to stand unaided. Antibiotics are generally not necessary.
Return to a milk diet should be a complete change and not diluted with electrolyte. Alternate milk and electrolyte solution should be fed every two to four hours.
Costs can vary from £15 for mild cases up to £180 for loss of a Charolais calf. Once a herd has experienced problems with rotavirus, annual vaccination of the cows costing £6-8 per cow is essential one to three months before their calving date.
Coronavirus diarrhoea
Calf coronavirus diarrhoea is similar to, or more severe than, rotaviral diarrhoea but fortunately this infection is much less common.
Coronavirus causes diarrhoea in calves up to 20 days old.
Treatment is as outlined above for rotavirus. Annual vaccination with a combined rotavirus, coronavirus and K99 combined vaccine is an invaluable insurance policy in all beef herds.
Enterotoxigenic E.coli
In calves this term is used to refer to strains of the bacterium E.coli possessing the K99 antigen.This causes less than 1 per cent of calf diarrhoea, but amongst these, losses can be high.
Usually, calves one to three days old, are affected with a sudden onset of profuse yellow/white diarrhoea, rapid and severe dehydration and recumbency. Accumulation of fluid in the abomasum and intestines gives the abdomen a bloated appearance.
Control
Movement of all pregnant cows to clean pastures and isolation of newly-calved cows should markedly reduce the incidence of ETEC disease.
Vaccinate all pregnant animals immediately with Rotavirus-Corona-K99, but it will take 10-14 days for sufficient protective antibody to accumulate in the colostrum. Oral antibiotics may be administered to all calves at birth during this period as a temporary prophylactic measure.
For all diseases affecting the young calf the calving accommodation should be kept clean and well-bedded; preferably mucked out between calvings. Ingestion of two litres colostrum within the first two hours of birth cannot be over-emphasised.
Cryptosporidiosis
C.parvum is not host specific and severe outbreaks occur when there is a build up of infection, especially if the same fields or buildings are used for autumn/winter calving then spring lambing as the protozoan parasite can remain dormant for months.
Calves 10-21 days old are most commonly affected. There is a profuse yellow/green diarrhoea, much mucus, only mild dehydration, but rapid loss of condition. Deaths are uncommon.
Simple control measures include - do not use same fields for calving/lambing; change fields every year or when clinical cases occur in that season; move new-born animals immediately on to clean pasture; use oral electrolyte solutions as necessary; cryptosporidiosis can affect man so hygiene is important when handling calves. Children and the elderly are most at risk.
Copyright NADIS 2008 www.nadis.org.uk.
NADIS is sponsored by
Meat and Livestock Commission Merial Animal Health English Beef and Lamb Executive
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
