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Sheridan Mi | Any of you ever had a cow or a feeder get listeria? They call it a winter/spring disease in younger cattle. I guess it's caused by something in moldy silage. It causes encephalitis and obviously, neurological problems. They say the mortality is pretty high. We had one with it about 12-15 years ago. She got all the way to the circling, thus the other name for it, circling disease. We ended up shooting that one.
Last Friday, I noticed a 700 pound heifer looking dumpy. I figured at first it was a touch of pneumonia, but then I noticed some twitching and realized that she wasn't coughing and didn't have a runny nose. The big thing was, she didn't seem to have reverse. She'd get her head in the feed bunk and couldn't back out. That has caused her to get in to a couple of situations that should have killed her.
We put her on real high doses of antibiotics, Resflor for inflammation and B complex to pep her up. She seems to be getting better every day. When I went to give her a shot this morning, she was defecating. It was quite dark and kind of hard, but there was a lot of it, so that told me she was eating and drinking. My wife said the antibiotics would cause the dark manure like that. I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but as good as she looked tonight, I'm optimistic that she'll beat this thing. Unless she gets herself in another bad predicament and hangs herself or something. | |
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Listeria
