Calf scour

munkus

Ladies and Gents,

Have had 2 calves that needed IV fluid in the last week due to scour. They were very weak and taken off cow straight away, reduced milk, given electrolytes and Vet gave antibiotics. No analysis done to see what was thecause, virus, parasite, bacteria or just too much milk. All of our cows are letout 3 days after calving, to fields with little enough grass. Nearly all calves get a small bit of milk scour but invariably doesn't affect them.

I want to know is what steps do you take to prevent scour.

Vaccinate for rotavirus and coronavirus- how successful is this? Someof our cows bring 14 - 20 days with their time, does this damage the effectivenessof the vaccine?

What measures have brought a visible improvement on your farm?

whelan1

i do cows with rotavec corona, this is effective 13 weeks from injection, must be given at least 3 weeks before calving and calf must get rc treated biestings for at least a week after birth. Calves get 3x4ml of halocur for 3 days after birth against crypto and 20ml of vecoxan at 10 days old against coccidiosos.... all this and good cleaning and disenfecting of sheds every few weeks has reduced scour, failure to do any of these results in calf deaths around here

bbam

We buy in calves so no idea of their Vaccination status.
We only treat what appears. Generally no real problems but when it appears we kinda follow the following;

Try and treat with natural youghert and kaolin powder for a few days. We don't stop milk and give electrolytes between milk feeds.

Never reduce feeds, they're on 2l morning and evening. Actually if I'm round I'll give a third half feed midday.

If it persists we find the sulpha powders good. Full one first time and then half per day for a few days. Keeping up the above.

Monitor temperature for any changes.

If blood and mucus is seen or a real black discharge we'd be thinking Vecoxin for cosidoccis.

If they have no temp we put them under a heat lamp.

If a calf is down it never gets fluid/fed down. Always get them up on their feet to avoid fluid onto the lungs.

Sometimes it can take 10l of fluids a day to keep a calf hydrated, for the past week I've been up at night giving fluids to a calf just to get enough in. The calf had gone down and the vet just said keep plugging away at what I was doing. Calf just got up tonight on his own for the first time in a week so hopefully we turned a corner.