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Injury to cow

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tamarack

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Went to check my my cows today and a purebred shorthorn cow about 5yrs old was missing her tail it is off at the tail head about 3in left there is no blood just a pink stump.They are cleaning up the sloughs for the last week and I am feeding bales to supplement. Would a poison weed or something like that cause this ?
 
Any ergot in the slough grass or hay? Cows will lose tails, hooves, slough calves- and some die from ergot poisoning...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ergot&qpvt=ergot&FORM=IGRE
 
I cant tell, I know what ergot looks like in grain but don't know what it would look like in grass. good point I have seen what it can do when their hooves fall off but never a tail and how long would it take? I know she had a tail last week.thanks gives me something to look at.
 
We were moving cows a year or 2 ago, and watched a black cow wrap her tail around a barb wire, then walk off with the bushy part still on the fence. Bled like crazy for the rest of the day. Had about 3 inches of bone sticking out the bottom.
To be honest, I have never seen that before nor since. I can't even remeber who own the cows now.
 
We have had it with coyotes and wolves, they chase and bite the tail, have had them fall off in sections.

Ergot in grain is bad, we graze a lot of lower land and have never had ergot problems from it!

CA
 
About 20 years ago my cousin and I put up some blue joint hay.. About January my cousin started having heifers sloughing calves- and noticed some missing tails... That's when we had the feeds all tested and they found ergot in the blue joint hay.. It was so small it was almost unnoticeable ... But apparently pretty potent..

I didn't have any problems because I had been feeding it along with enough good alfalfa and grass to my old cows -- but he had been feeding his to his coming first calf heifers- and it really caused a train wreck with them...
 
Ergot will be in the heads. I had wheat a couple years ago that had ergot in it bad and even the wheat straw tested high.
 

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