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Question for armchair vets

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I'd be asking the vet to take blood and/or tissue samples, maybe CSF samples too. Listeria, lead poisoning, encephalitis, other toxicities in utero (minerals, plants, etc), bacterial or viral causes in utero (BVD, neospora, IBR, etc), immune system diseases (autoimmune or hypersensitivity), etc... are all calves by the same bull? out of heifers or out of older cows? dams related? anything unusual about their birth (ie, backwards, cold night, full moon, and they had no colostrum)?

There's a vet school in MN isn't there? might give them a call. The one in WA has a field investigation unit that will come out to the ranch.
 
There's no genetic, environmental or situational connection that I can see. The vet looked at 3 of the 4 calves today and felt the two younger ones were two different problems yet than the others. One he said looked like a circulation problem caused by bacteria that the calf will probably lose his feet (and life) from. The other he thought may be a navel infection, however I'm skeptical of that. It's too similar to the others. Time will tell I guess.
 
An update on my calves. The one with the circulation problem went just as the vet suggested. Back feet died, ears shriveled up, was hoping to keep him around until another old crow calved to draft the calf because his mother was a super milking heifer, but when I saw maggots crawling in his feet I couldnt take it anymore and got the gun.

The older two are pretty much okay now, the other younger calf has just now started feeling better. Battled a high temp for a long time and nothing seemed to touch it. Will be interesting to see if he develops the sore legs later.

Will probably never know what the cause was though. Thanks for all the input, hopefully won't see any more of it!
 
The dying extremities sound like Selenium overdose.

Google "nervous coccidosis in baby calves" and see if the symptoms fit for the other symptoms your calves were dealing with.

Good luck with that. I know what its like to have the vet not know and you feel so helpless.
 
My first question would be what are your calving conditions? Are they all calved in the same lot or pasture calved? How long have they been in those conditions? Have you tried moving your pregnant cows to a different location? If there is a possibility that the calves are ingesting something that is making them sick I would move the cows. Remember even though they are not eating anything except milk they can get those toxins off of the cows udder. If you were to give me a penny for my thoughts you would be getting ripped off, so take them for what they are worth.
 
If you are fighting Mycoplasma, Baytril was labeled for it last year. From my experience, Baytril was the only thing that helped me, but I still had a total disaster, last year.
I can give you a whole bunch more info, if you want it.
 
The sick calves came out of t least 3 different lots, all pretty clean and dry. Its really hard to come up with a common denominator for this.
 

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