Bloody Noses and Fevers

I’ve been working on a case for the last couple weeks on a farm that seems to be having some respiratory issues. The milkers have noticed several cows that have come into the milking parlor with bloody noses. One cow was described as having a “foul smell” to the nasal discharge while the others seem to be more just blood tinged mucous.  I hope by now, you’ve all learned to not eat while you are reading my posts….

The picture is one of the aforementioned cows.  The herdsman has also been concerned with several “first calf heifers” that have been spiking temperatures of 104-106 F, about 1 week after calving.  They are down on milk, not eating like they should, but seem to respond to anti-inflammatories and antibiotics. 

Let me pause to explain to those who may not know what a “first calf heifer” is.  A “first calf heifer“ is a cow that has had her very first baby.  In the dairy industry we use this term very frequently.  We still call her a “heifer” because she is still growing and has not yet reached her full mature cow size.  We call her a “first calf heifer” because she just had her first baby and has entered her first lactation.  Cows will continue to grow to mature size until they are about 3-4 years old.  They have reached sexual maturity, at 1 year of age, and therefore we breed them to have their first baby by the age of 2, but not physical maturity until 3-4.
Ok, back to the case.  So upon physical exam of these animals, I’ve noticed some clear nasal discharge (a good thing), normal temperatures, normal stomach movement, heart and lung sounds, normal manure and uterus discharge; pretty much completely normal physical exam for a fresh cow (new mom).  So now what???

In veterinary school we often heard the phrase; “If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.”  In my world, this means, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck!  So, when I see bloody noses in cows, my first thought is usually; “did they have a lung abscess/hematoma that popped from a previous pneumonia event?”  My second thought is “did someone hit them with the skid steer pushing up feed?” If the answer to the first two questions is no, then I turn to the zebras, the very important DO NOT FORGET ABOUT zebras, such as Foot and Mouth Disease, Bluetongue and other foreign animal diseases that must be reported to the state veterinarian, resulting in a very fast quarantine and Plum Island certified veterinarians taking samples.  EEEEEEEEKKKK!!!

To see one cow with a bloody nose is not really a big deal, and almost always, I chalk it up to a lung abscess that blew. But, this farmer gave me 4 cows with bloody noses. After discussing with the other veterinarians in the practice, I decided it was best to take blood samples to submit to the lab.  When we pull these blood samples, we usually have to wait two weeks and then pull another sample called a “convalescent sample”.   These blood samples get sent to the lab to check for antibody titers to various common respiratory diseases. Taking two samples, two weeks apart, allows us to see if the cows antibody response to the virus has come down as the cow’s body starts to deal with the virus.

A normal cow’s temperature ranges from 100-102.8 F.  When they have temperatures as high as 105-106 F we often think immediately of viruses.  Bacterial infections will raise a cow’s temperature, but usually not as high as a virus will.   These high temperatures along with other cows in the herd having bloody noses in the barn were most likely due to one of the 5 or 6 bugs associated with pneumonia in cattle, also known as Bovine Respiratory Disease Complex, or BRD.  When I received my finalized report for the first round on blood samples taken, it looked as though these cows have a few different bugs they are dealing with.  The first bug is “Coronavirus.”

Coronavirus (Corona) is an old bug in a new form.  More commonly Corona is known to cause diarrhea in baby calves and winter dysentery in adult cows. It’s one of the bugs that are always around in cattle and when we go looking for it, we find it. To help a newborn calf deal with Corona, we vaccinate mom when she is very pregnant and starting to make her colostrum. This way, the calf will hopefully receive the protection it needs as starts life.  It is recently starting to show up in multiple cases of respiratory disease in cattle of all ages. Unfortunately the vaccine used to prevent diarrhea in baby calves, has not been seen to help much with adult cows with the respiratory form of the disease.  There is lots of money going into research on corona and how it plays along with the other common bugs associated with BRD in cattle.   

The other bug that seemed to be mucking the waters was IBR, Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis.  The actual virus that causes IBR is Bovine Herpes Virus-1. This is another common bug found in the BRD complex in cattle. There are several good vaccines on the market for IBR and although these respiratory vaccines may not prevent the disease, they certainly lessen the severity of the disease.

 For this particular herd, we may need to re-evaluate the vaccination protocol to see how we can help booster the first calf heifers’ immune systems.  Cow’s that just had a baby need to have as smooth a transition into being a milking cow as possible, and having high fevers and dealing with pneumonia is something that definitely sets them back.  All the cows pictured are doing just fine and the cows that had high fevers are doing much better.  We continue to monitor temperatures and look for bloody noses and hopefully as the outside temperature starts to steady, so will the cows!

Toxo and Karma

Where do I even start for this post????? These last two weeks have seemed a bit crazy. But, as I think back on any previous week, they all seem to be that way….  I worked a short week last week, as I took a mini-vacation to Georgia, to meet my newest nephew.  It was a whirlwind trip, too short, but oh so worth it! Before I left, I had to cram all my herd checks into the shortened week and as usual, pick up any sick cow calls for the day. 

One of the calls was for a herd of sheep. This is a new herd that was co-mingled from 3 different herds.  As previously mentioned, it is lambing season and about a third of the 40 ewes had already lambed.  This shepherd was having trouble because there were two first time ewes that each had lambed with twin, dead lambs.  The ewes were completely normal and didn’t seem to miss a beat. But finding dead lambs was a bit alarming to the owner.

If there were only one set of dead twins, it would not be as alarming, and we probably wouldn’t perform a bunch of diagnostics to figure out the cause of the dead twins. However, with two sets of dead lambs, and several other lambs since, that have been born alive but have soon thereafter died, we decided it was best to send samples in to the diagnostic lab.  A complete “abort panel” costs about $500 for just the testing alone, not to mention my time and costs associated with examining the ewes, the farm and preparing the samples.  Due to the significant cost, I spoke with a pathologist at the lab, and we decided to test for only the most probable causes.  The samples we must submit are blood from the ewe, a piece of placenta, and various samples from the dead lamb such as: heart, lung, liver, spleen, adrenal glands, kidneys, skin, stomach contents and blood.  



Toxoplama gondii

I’m still waiting on the histopathology report (microscopic evaluation of the tissues), to support the blood findings, but the blood from the ewe came back positive for toxoplasmosis. This is a disease that is commonly carried by cats. It is a protozoa that is found in the feces of cats and is zoonotic (transmissible from animals to humans).  Contamination of the sheep feed with cat feces is usually how the disease is spread.  Growing up we always had “barn cats” and loved playing with them.  It wasn’t until vet school that I understood why having barn cats really wasn’t the best idea from a disease transmission standpoint.  Most farms don’t have litter boxes for the cats; instead the cats usually use bedding, hay or even silage for their litter boxes. This is precisely how sheep can end up getting toxoplasmosis.  It is treatable, and this farm has begun treatments for the sheep as I continue to wait on the lab for a final report of their findings.

I felt like this week was also “Beat up Dr. Telgen week.”  I’m not sure I ever really believed in karma, but the more I work in this field, the more real it seems. 

The first day back from my mini-vacation, we had a meeting at 7am to discuss a new insurance policy that the clinic will be participating in, from there the day was shaping up to be a doozy.  I had 6 bulls that had to be examined to get ready to go to the bull stud.  Because so much of the dairy industry uses artificial insemination as a means to get cows pregnant, there is quite a demand for genetically superior bulls to contribute to the gene pool.  Based on DNA evaluation, bull studs will select the animals that they want from a particular farm. These bulls will then go to the bull stud at an early age, to finish being raised, and start the semen collection process.  Before they go, the herd veterinarian must do a “pre-screening” to make sure there are no contagious diseases on the animal, no heart murmurs, respiratory disease, lameness due to poor conformation, abnormalities in the reproductive organs of the bulls and some blood testing for various transmissible diseases. Once cleared, a health certificate is made, and they are on their way to the bull stud.

After checking these bulls, I had physical exams to perform, some more blood testing and health charts to do on animals going to a sale. Then, I had two herd checks and 4 DA’s to cut.  The second DA patient seemed a bit more high-strung than the other cows. Even though we sedate them, if they are the least bit worked up before we even start, the sedation can be counteracted by adrenaline.  This particular cow did not even like me clipping her, and decided to let me know it with a kick to the shins.  Now this isn’t the first, nor the last time, that I’ve been kicked, but regardless, it’s always a surprise and still leaves a mark.  The bruise is now starting to show its lovely colors and is still a little tender to the touch. If the kick was the only wound of the week, I wouldn’t complain and sound like such a wimp, but then Wednesday happened.

About 3pm I get a call for a calving.  This is on a farm that handles most of the calvings themselves, so you know when they call; it’s going to be bad. This was an older cow that had a broken tail head.  So right where the top of her back meet her tail, it was broken down into the birth canal, making for little room for the calf to come out. To top it off, the calf was HUGE.  It was alive when I arrived. When we were discussing our options, the herdsman said that the cow was a priority and the calf was not.  This is never an easy thing to make a decision on, but based on the situation, we decided to try to save the cow.  Instead of doing a C-section, we were going to perform a fetotomy, which is cutting the calf out in pieces.  The wire we use is a cutting wire, so to try to get the wire positioned in a very small space with a very large calf and my own arms, is quite a feat.  My hands and arms show the battle wounds.  I always laugh when people ask me if I want a manicure to go with my pedicure. These hands are working hands, and not made to look pretty….

This was a mess of a calving. I ended up calling in another veterinarian to help as my arms were so fatigued from making the first three cuts.  The calf was just huge, the cow’s uterus had started to close down on the calf, and there was little room to do much of anything.  The only part left to get out was the hips. Now, I’m not a short person, and the farmer and the other veterinarian helping, are all at least 5’10,” so length of arms was not an issue. Unfortunately with the uterus clamped so tightly down on the calf and the cow being so big, we were unable to even reach the hips to pass the cutting wire around it.   We tried all the tricks we knew of, from trying to prolapse the uterus, pumping water into it to “float” the hips back to us, but all to no avail.  After 4.5 hours of trying, we decided we weren’t making any progress and it was time to call it quits.  The cow was eating and drinking by the time we left last night, but a call to the herdsman this morning revealed that the cow had died overnight as well.  There is only so much a cow can take, and although we really try our best, sometimes we lose it all.

It's not ALL Work....

This past week I had the pleasure of attending the 2^nd annual “Milk Lovers Ball.” This is a new event that the Tri-Country Holstein club has put on to raise money for various scholarships and events. Last year they raised $4000+ for farmers that suffered from Hurricane Irene. This year there were two women that were very involved in the agriculture community that died suddenly and unexpectedly over the last year. One woman died from a very aggressive brain tumor and the other from spinal meningitis. The money raised at this year’s event is being used to create two one year scholarships in each of these women’s name.

The agriculture community is a tight-knit community, so it’s really great for clients, nutritionists, financial lenders, veterinarians and other people from various aspects of the agriculture community to get together and socialize.  We had a wonderful dinner and music from a live band. There was also a raffle with lots of wonderful gift baskets filled with gift certificates for golf, dinner, hairdos, jewelry, wine and more!!! The best part was I actually won one! (I never win anything, so I was quite excited!) 

Gift Basket I won

 

It may seem weird that as a professional you become friends with your clients. In the agriculture community, this is quite common. Everyone has the same interests and love for an industry that works so hard for so little.  We all work together to achieve the same goal. So, maybe no gory pictures or heroic-sounding stories this week. Instead we showered, shaved, maybe donned a little make-up and traded out our barn boots and coveralls for dancing shoes! Just a taste of what life outside of being covered in manure, blood and guts, is like!
 

Myself and Friends