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Multimin question

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What is your vaccination program? Have you brought in any outside cattle besides bulls? That's great you're testing your bulls for both trich AND BVD. I'm sorry you're having troubles, it's frustrating, but it sounds like you're on the right track to figure things out :???: .
 
Getting back to Multimin what we have found is that herds including our own showed improvment in reproduction with the use of the product. Our vet who is also a professor at Purdue and does a lot of ET work found a 100% increase in embryos with the use of Multimin.
On the mineral issue there is a reason for the term of free choice. Animals can make the decision of what they need better than man and if a mineral, salt, or protien source is offered free choice their body will dictate what and how much they need. Not offering mineral 24/7/365 is fool hearty.
 
rancherfred said:
We tested our bulls this past week for trich and don't have the results yet. I also took tissue samples just to rule out BVD-PIs.

What I am leaning towards is the possibility that it is nutritional as a result of the disease. I have done quite a bit of studying from various sources on the effects of lepto hardjo-bovis. There are several systems that it can affect. The most obvious one is reproductive. In addition to the reproductive is the possibility of mastitis. We have seen a fairly high rate of udder problems over the last several years, but I was attributing them to a shift in calving periods. We moved from February to May calving and I was thinking that the better nutrition when our cows were freshening was causing the problems with the udders. After studying some on HB I am now beginning to suspect that my udder problems may have its roots in lepto instead of nutritional. Thirdly there is also evidence that lepto can damage the kidneys in some cases.

This is where I am making some leaps that I am not able to completely defend with the research available to me but it seems fairly logical, others may disagree. I am thinking now that during the last couple of years we have had a fairly high rate of HB infection on these heifers, starting as calves. Because it was undiagnosed and untreated it ended up damaging the kidneys and as a result limits the animals overall ability to thrive on the feed they are getting. Calving in May means breeding in August. The last couple of years we have had unusually wet springs followed by very dry summers. This leads to pastures that are pretty well burned up by the time we are going into breeding season. On the cows that don't have damaged metabolic systems the feed is still adequate, because we are a short grass prairie ecosystem, to meet the nutritional requirements of the animals. The animals that have compromised systems, because of the damage from the lepto, may not be able to extract adequate nutrition from the dry grasses to meet their maintenance needs. That would put them into a decreasing plane of nutrition, and as a result an anestrous state that they don't recover from until the following spring when they are once again on abundant, highly nutritious grass.

I don't know if this is the correct explanation, but it is the best that I can come up with seeing as how our production system, i.e. the pastures we run on and the nutritional profile the cattle are exposed to, hasn't changed in any significant manner for quite some time. I would like it to be something as simple as putting out some mineral to solve the problem, but I am afraid that the effects of this infection are going to take a few years to be resolved.
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Rancherfed, you sure have been having a rough time and it is certainly a tough pill to swallow. I am sorry I am not familiar with the research you are talking about but I would just ask if you have body condition scored your heifers at breeding? What flesh are they in and how are they performing? I understand your logic in your explanation but does the Hardjo affect only the kidney's or other internal organs as well. If its only the kidney's, I wouldn't think that would be the culprit because their function is filtration and excretion of waste. They don't really have a function in the physical metabolism of nutrients and production of energy. If they were damaged though, it could lead to toxic levels of undesirables in the blood and eventually severe sickness and death over and above infertility. If HB messes with the liver, then you are probably spot on, but I am inclined to agree with Gcreek and his idea of a combination of factors. One thing you might want to try is have someone ultrasound or palpate the ovaries on your heifers just before breeding to see how many are actually cycling. It might help you rule out a few things.
 
Another thing to keep in mind as to the reproductive health of your cows is something that our embryoligst told us is that what is happening today is refleted on what was 60-90 days ago - ie. the reproductive health, nutrition levels, sperm and embryos being produced is what was going on 60-90 days ago as that's when they were actually produced. If anything was failing or in shortfall then it will reflect what will happen now.
 
From the pictures rancherfred has posted over the years I am pretty sure it is not conditions score issue. They always seem to be managed very well. The trich issue does have me thinking though. However if a cow loses a calf to trich I believe the cow will cycle again before too long not go anestrous.

When he AI'ed the group that were open last year and they bred well that kind of leads me back to the trich idea though.
 
@WyoRancher: We had not been vaccinating the cows for anything because we didn't think we were at risk for exposure to these diseases. We have a closed herd with the exception of an occasional purchased bull. Our vaccination program is now going to consist of Bovi-Shield Gold with HB at the time we bring the cows home from cornstalks. We will also be doing something similar to the heifers but probably will give either Spirovac as an additional boost or some other broad spectrum like Bovi-Shield at AI time.

@WV: The research that I have read is inconclusive on the effect of HB on the liver. Some other strains of lepto have been demonstrated to cause liver disease and liver samples can contain the HB bacteria. What I haven't been able to find is direct research that shows that the presence of the bacteria in the liver actually results in damage and consequently liver disease. It has been demonstrated to cause kidney disease, but I couldn't find anything concrete on liver disease.

One of the only other things that I can think to add is that on the heifers that were open and anestrous, the anestrous state appears to be linked to nutritional state. We had these heifers on a TMR aimed at 1-1.25/lbs of gain after they were weaned until about April. At that point the entire group was turned out and were grazing native range for the whole summer. When we preg checked them and sorted them I put the opens in the lot for about a month and fed them a TMR. Those heifers were then sold on a feeder sale in early January. It is the first time I have ever sent a load of cattle through the sale ring and the entire group was uniform enough that they all sold as one group. I don't recall the exact weight but I know they didn't weigh 700lbs. I think it was something like 695lbs. For some reason they had quit gaining. There was no correlation between age and physical size. I had everything from some of the youngest to the oldest in that group and they were all about the same size and all anestrous. Those heifers were all on the same graze and were handled the same way but a good size group of them quit gaining and went anestrous. That is why I think it has to be some correlation between disease impacts on the body and nutrition.
 
I don't have any pictures and they were all red so I couldn't tell if there was any discoloration. Since it is winter they were long and shaggy.
 
I'm no vet but I just finished reading this blog and one thing that comes to my mind is some type of mycotoxin. You had mentioned pastured on stalks, TMR, and anestrus. Me thinker kicked on and I decided to throw in. :???:
 
Rancherfred, could it be something as simple as a Vitamin A deficiency?

Symptoms of vitamin A deficiency

One of the first easily detected signs of vitamin A deficiency in cattle is night blindness. An easy way to check for this condition is to place an obstacle in the pathway of cattle and notice if they stumble over it at twilight. Other early signs are loss of appetite, rough hair coat, dull eyes, slowed gains and reduced feed efficiency. Diarrhea and pneumonia may be the first indicators, especially in young animals. Later developments include excessive watering of the eyes, staggering gait, lameness or stiffness in knee and hock joints, and swelling of the legs and brisket (and sometimes in the abdominal region). Feedlot cattle with advanced vitamin A deficiency often pant excessively at high temperatures and go into convulsions when excited.

Signs of vitamin A deficiency in breeding herds include lowered fertility and calving percentage. Cows abort, drop dead or weak calves, and are difficult to settle.
 
I've used Multimin and liked it. My reason for using it was the selenium- concentration is equivalent to Mu-Se- and I wanted the copper too. Had some calves eating my wood fences with red tinged coats, so felt Multimin would be a good choice. I used it on everything from unthrifty calves to cows prior to breeding or calving, really felt like it helped them clean after calving, improved weight gain and pregnancy rates. I did have mineral out for them too but it didn't seem to be sufficient.

In your shoes I'd probably pull blood on a couple animals, see if they're deficient and in what, and go from there... cheaper than giving everyone Multimin and gives you results faster than waiting to see how many don't breed back.

Keep in mind that just because they've been running on that pasture for 40 years without problems doesn't mean that you won't have problems now- even farmers rotate crops and give fields time off because ground conditions change and soil can be depleted. It's also possible your water source is affected, unless you have your own personal creek or aquifer you never know what may have changed- some minerals can interfere with absorption and use of other minerals.
 
If you read the contents Multimin is simply chelated minerals in liquid injectable form. I'm sure it gives the cow a "boost" of these minerals but you can get the same affect by using a mienral with chelates in it. And at around $5.00 per cow it's a bit pricey. Won't hurt anything to use it but dont' know how absolutely necessary it is is you already keep a good mineral out. 24/365.
 
One needs to make sure the mineral contains what your cows need. In my area selenium and copper needs to be at a higher level then most mineral formulas have.
 

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