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Severe Pink Eye not responding

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Ben H

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I've treated a bunch of pink-eye this year, I was considering the vaccine this spring but I was too cheap. Anyway, I've used shots under the eyelid of Penicillin and Dexamethasone with patches on some. There were two calves, who happened to be twins, that I brought into our old tie stall barn. They both got it in both eyes. The twin girl (freemartin) is the first one to get pink eye and is finally starting to look better, her brother has been getting the same treatment and only gotten worse. I've also been giving SQ injections of LA-200. The steer I'm concerened with has heavy swelling in the eye, I'll be suprised if he doesn't loose his sight, not sure what else I can do for him. He's not tearing up much anymore, a little discharge, but the eye itself looks terrible. I'm open to further suggestion.
 
Depending on how many total head are involved you may want your vet to culture the eye. There is a different/new strain of pinkeye out there that the vaccine doesn't cover. An important part to controlling pinkeye is irritation prevention. Fly tags, dust bags, wetting down lots, etc... If you stop the bacterial growth the eye will heal in time. Excenel and LA200 have always worked well for us. Good luck.
 
I think you have done all you can do. Doctor and eyepatch or sew the lid together. There is something in the eyelid that is helpful to healing.

It could be IBR too, that can cause pinkeye. Do you vaccinate for that?

Get those cows on some good mineral so their immune system is better and they can fight that stuff off on their own.
 
There are about a dozen off label drugs that I have been told to use on pink eye from Nuflor to Micotil but generally we use simple LA-200 or Tetradure as they seem to be most cost affective... But if after treating over and over again and not getting any better I would wonder wtf was going on and maybe take a swab off the eye and have it tested.. The patches and dark barns seem to work well but I have had one or two that were just a pain in the heiny to get cleared up. Have a heiferette that I have to slaughter becasue of her eyes, Blind in one and probably 50% blind in the other. Poor thing.
 
Had a spring calf this past spring that got blinded by blowing sand and dirt. He was walking in circles and totally blind acting when noticed him. Caught him 3 times in ten days and gave hi dose of LA200 and sprayed "Gentocin" in his eyes. Today he can see ok and is on grass with mother and doing good! Sure did not think there was much hope for him at the time-a matter of fact-he was not very far away from a 22. So don't give up yet! :)
 
Wipe around the entire eyelid with an alcohol swab, clean it up, throw a pile of 'pink-eye powder' on the eye, spray the area around the eye with 'pink-eye solution' and then put a patch on it. Spray the calf down with insect repellent.

This is my solution for every case we have. Never used to put the patch on, but it doesn't take much more effort, so I have started doing it. I don't use the expensive normal patches for cattle (otherwise I wouldn't do it). I use regular face dust masks and tear off the metal band, curl the edges to get a flat surface, and paste it to the area around the eye using tag cement. Because it is white and should realy be shading the eye, I cover it in 'pinkeye solution' (purple spray).

I only doctored two? animals this year. There were many more that should have been done, but never were because lack of facilities where they were. I came to the conclusion, why do we treat for pinkeye? Some cases do get pretty bad and should be treated, but I did end up leaving a couple of yearling heifers this summer to heal themselves up. They do have a little white dot on their eye, but so what? Have never heard of people getting docked at the mart for animals that have gotten and recovered from pinkeye. Ours have always been able to see a little out of the affected eye after they have recovered, so it never affected us production-wise in cows.
 
Ok, this is gonna be another of those "Are You CRAZY?! :shock: " answers, but I swear it works, I've seen it work myself!

We had one that got pink eye, and my dad (I was still in grade school) bent one end of a drinking straw (a clean one) up and taped it, forming a bottom, then filled it about 3/4 full of iodized salt......and folded the other end over, taped it, and took it to the cow. The next part wasn't easy, but if you have a squeeze chute with a good headgate, that should help. You just put the salt in the affected eye, and get outta the way when she comes out, cause she's pertnear guaranteed to be mad......
One dose did it for that ole gal, but in a really severe case like it sounds that you have, it might take two.

Or........and I've never seen this myself, but have heard of folks using this method........same as above, except using Mastitis antibiotic.

If it was me, I'd use the salt first, I'm not sure how well the ointment would stay in the eye, or if it would just slide out as fast as you put it in.

From the sounds of your post, you've been dealing with this some time, and the cattle are probably gettin just a wee bit on the testy side.......Hope you find something that works, and they'll soon be well.
 
I know a fella that treats a lot of pinkeye both on the range and in the feedlot operation-- he says they used to go thru the problem of patching and stuff- but now claims that all they do is give a heavy dose of LA-200 and spray the eye and all around it with WD-40...He claims it works every time, one treatment....
 
Far as patches for pinkeye, we just used old jeans. Cut a circle out and used some kind of special glue to hold it on.

Mr. FH just said, "we used to do that and also sew their eyes shut. Gee Whiz, no wonder I hate doctoring."

Lucky for him, we very seldom need to doctor anything anymore.
Just the way we like it. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!
 
I think I said I used patches on most of the animals. I didn't on this guy or his sister. My Vet agreed that bringing them in the barn, keeping them sprayed (fly spray) and out of the UV light would be better then covering both eyes. I gotta give this guy credit, he can't see but he has not lifted a hoof or gotten out of control...his freemartin sister on the other hand, she's nuts. Even if she wasn't a freemartin there is no way she'd be a replacement heifer.

My animals have been given free choice minerals all spring. The problem is that I have a poor pasture setup, they get rotated but they use a single water source shared by all padocks, this waterer is next to the manure storage barn (cost shared with NRCS), they congregrate in the area and I know it's where the flys are breeding. We've never had a problem before. Thank God I bought a Powder River chute this spring and a Tub. I don't know how I would have treated all the others without it.

I just saw an advertisement earlier this week for a new Oxytet product that is a 300mg dose and has a different suspsention that lets it last for 7 days instead of LA-200's 3 days. It is also the same witholding time, 28 days.

Are there any rules that would condemn a carcass for various stages of pinkeye.

If this guy heals up and looses his vision then I have the ability to keep him in the barn and feed him for the remainder of his life.

I'll also make this clear that this is by far the worst case I've ever seen in my life.

I like some of your ideas on patches...jeans and dust masks.

When you suture the eye shut do you have to later remove the stitches or do they fall out somehow?
 
No rules to condemn an animal with a healed case of pinkeye... You will take a beating on them at the barn though.

ONe such product of 300mg oxytet is Tetradue.. You need to get it from a vet, I think it works much better than LA-200..
 
Faster horses said:
I think you have done all you can do. Doctor and eyepatch or sew the lid together. There is something in the eyelid that is helpful to healing.

It could be IBR too, that can cause pinkeye. Do you vaccinate for that?

Get those cows on some good mineral so their immune system is better and they can fight that stuff off on their own.
Click to expand...

I have'nt treated anything all year I 2nd the mineral and Vigortone is all it's cracked up to be..
 
Oldtimer said:
I know a fella that treats a lot of pinkeye both on the range and in the feedlot operation-- he says they used to go thru the problem of patching and stuff- but now claims that all they do is give a heavy dose of LA-200 and spray the eye and all around it with WD-40...He claims it works every time, one treatment....
Click to expand...

I've seen this done to....at it worked i guess cuz the pink eye went away.
 
I know rkaiser's been treating a pile of his Welsh Black cows, and crossbreds, putting mastitis goop in 'em and patching, but he said lots that DIDN'T get patched, healed just as quick as the ones who had the meds, so they quit treating. He said some of them got to looking bad, but eventually cleared up with no apparent blindness.

In the cattle I'm custom-grazing, some crossbreds have had it bad, but we can't get them in anywhere with a squeeze where they're at. The cows have cleared up on their own, but 2 of the calves still have one eye completely whited over. Just crossin' my fingers basically.

Craziest thing is, not a single one of the purebred Galloways have gotten so much as a runny eye, even at rkaiser's place. Coincidence? Maybe, but why I don't know, cause it went through the others like wildfire, and all in the same pastures.
 
a little off subject but we had this holstein cow that was co-owned with another local dairy farm, she didn't want to get bred back. As a last ditch effort we put her in with our Hereford bull and got what looks very similar to a Black Baldy but is very difficult to put a lot of condition on, her name is Panda. Her first offspring became a good steer, he just hit the freezer a couple weeks ago, grew very well and was a Baldie with a patch over one eye, he was named Bandit. The next offspring was a little troublemaker who became known as Pandora. The neat thing is that the recessive gene showed in her, she is back to Red. Homozygous Recessive I assume. Last time I had Panda in the chute I noticed a tiny red spot on her neck, guess the recessive gene sometimes shows through.
 

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