Cattle Management - what do we do? - Throughout the lactation?

[Saffy]

I thought I would start a post about the day to day management of our Dexters. Partly to find out what others do about things such as drying off etc - I am so nosey and partly because from time to time people who are new to cattle require info and maybe if we start a thread it will build up with information that hasn't already been mentioned.

As I started my farming life as a dairy farmer where it was the thing to do to use dry cow tubes at the end of a lactation, I have carried this practice on with my Dexters. Although I was a little nervous at first as of course they aren't used to having their udder and teats handled but Chris holds their tail up tightly, right at the base and all has been well - so far! However I have heard that these days you can use a sealant instead which seals the end of the teat and deters infection getting in, therefore lessening the chances of nasties when the cow is dry like the awful Summer Mastitis. This sealant is used alot by people who are Organic but I believe some people use tubes and sealant on their cows.

Do many Dexter owners use dry cow therapy on their cows when they dry them off?

Stephanie

[domsmith]

The only cows we have had mastitis in are cows still in milk.
All my girls are in full milk through out the summer, does that help stop infection as they are dry in jan feb march the cold winter months.

i would not know where to start with tubes etc.

dom

[bjreroberts]

Panic....I've been neglecting my cow...run for the books...

All I can find reference to this is with dairy cattle, everything else I looked up suggests the best prevention for mastitis is clean pasture / bedding. I do hope this is correct I don't want something else to add to my existing paranoia on TB, Blue Tongue, liver fluke etc.

I did ring the vet last year when my cow had two quarters on one side clearly bigger than the other two. Again, panic, refer to the books "milk out any lumpy infected bits"...resulting in me trying unsuccessfully to hand milk my extremely calm unrestrained cow in the middle of the field whilst she just looked round at me with a bemused look on her face. Rang the vet who said, if she let you do that then it is definitely not mastitis its probably just her 12 month old calf suckling from one side only.

I am going to have to throw those books out soon, they seem to have created more worry than solve problems.

[catomell]

I am now feeling like the worst cattle keeper in the world - the bull calves I let run with the herd, and the heifer calves I remove so that their own father doesn't have a go at them. Generally, though, I leave said heifers on their mothers till they are more than six months old. I then let mum's dry up naturally, and have not yet had a problem - am I causing them untold pain and distress. This method has always worked with my goats, and so far (fingers crossed) has also worked with the cows. If it is relevant, I calve my lot towards the end of July, let the calf suckle throughout the next six to eight months, then wean them when they are indoors, and are separated, but can see each other. I feel like the least knowledgeable cattle keeper alive at the moment, and have no idea of anything regarding tubes etc......
Please help..

[Saffy]

Sorry everyone - I didn't mean to cause concern!

As I said I used to be a dairy farmer and it was the normal thing to do to dry off with antibiotic tubes, one squeezed up into each teat and then that quarter briefly massaged gently to diperse it around. They help prevent Summer Mastitis which as the name suggests can be especially useful if your cow is going to be dry during the summer months and also reduce the overall mastitis cell count in the udder. So yes it can help your cow if she is prone to mastitis but isn't likely to cure a rampant problem.

Summer mastitis tends to happen more in the dry cow and when you are dairying if the cow has lost even one quarter she is no longer viable. Where a suckler can carry on happily. I have heard of a cow suckling with just one quarter left!!!

I think - not sure really! - there are probably very few suckler herds that use dry cow therapy but wondered if Dexter people did as we are generally a bit precious about our charges!

Stephanie

[Louise Badcock]

I do not do anything. The calf runs with the mother who stops feeding it some time before she is due to calve again. My old cow did get mastitis but this was when she was feeding a calf. She lost the quarter maybe because I did not spot the problem quickly enough, but continued to feed calves for another 10 years.
I used to put dry cow tubes up the pedigree sheep when I weaned the lambs in August for the tup sales. They were very prone to mastitis but i don't know if it did any good!
Louise

[Martin]

I would imagine that very few suckler herds actually bother with 'dry cow therapy'. Most, like myself dry cows off naturally when cows are getting to the end of their lactation anyway. I house as late as possible depending on weather and ground conditions with the latest being between Christmas and New Year. As I like to calve in March the cows are ready for a break from their nine or ten month old calves and going onto a ration of hay only, does restrict milk production. The only mastitis seen in my herd is when a cow is giving too much milk for her calf when at spring grass, I would normally then draw off some milk a couple of times a day give her an anti-inflamitory jab and some long acting antibiotic. As my vet knows the history of my herd it normally only takes a phone call and he will draw up the dosage required and I will collect from his surgery within an hour of the call.
I think we can make things over complicated if we are not carefull, my philosophy is 'if they don't need it, don't give it'. Most Dexters will not be 'pushed' hard enough to require the preventative medicine given to dairy cattle that are little more than milking machines where the more you put in the more you get, including problems.
We all call on the services of a vet, when he is on the farm you should always be asking his advice, have a list of questions that you want to ask ready for his next visit, most vets are happy to give advice as it proves to him that you are interested in the animals welfare and you want to do your best for them.
The inexperienced should not be alarmed, there are lots of different ways to do your cattle well, there is no blue print on how to do it. there are so many differing factors between farms, type of soil, facilities, experience, finances, the list is endless. As long as you do not allow an animal to suffer, your cows are healthy and they do not have any health problems then you are doing it right, most that are achieving this will normally only need to tweek a few things to make the job easier and more enjoyable.
Your local group will have get together's and farm visits, go to as many as you can, you can then see how others do it, ask what they do and absorb as much information as you can, learning from others experiences can be a lot cheaper than learning from your own.

[Martin]

Missed something from my post. The most important thing you can do is observe, look at your animals as much as you can, learn from looking at them when they are ok and when they are not. Catching signs of problems early can save a lot of money and feelings of guilt, most of us have the experience of saying 'I wish I'd spotted it earlier'.
Saffy, don't feel guilty as it's good that people raise different subjects, that's what this place is all about, if the majority of people say they don't use dry cow therapy maybe you'll try giving it a miss and knock an expence off the balance sheet.

[Saffy]

Hello Martin,

Yes giving it a miss would certainly be worth a thought as far as expense is concerned. I think it is about £14 a time! However I think I am a bit institutionalised!!! Having done it for over 100 cows a year for many, many years I would probably feel negligent not too but I will think about it and maybe try it without next year.

I do feed my cows a few Mag Rolls twice a day in the summer, this is partly so that I go to the field twice to check them for things like Summer Mastitis and obviously partly to guard against the dreaded Magnesium Deficiency.

The trouble with Summer Mastitis is that once you see it, it is nearly always going too late to save the quarter whatever you do and a couple of my cows are dry during the summer.

Stephanie

[Saffy]

Our young bull has warts - he was orphaned at a young age so maybe his immunity isn’t yet as strong as it should be – would being orphaned reduce his immunity, does anyone know? Anyway he very suddenly had particularly bad warts, in fact the worst warts I have seen. Very annoying as he had done very well in the show ring last year as a yearling and we had wanted to show him this year but could see it was out of the question.

(I remembered our vet telling me many years ago that a vaccine could be made when a couple of dairy cows had some on their teats but nothing like as bad as this bull has them on him, they are huge!)

Anyway we asked the vet. Apparently the animal will gain enough immunity itself to get rid of them by the time it is 4 years old but he isn’t 2 years old until July. A few warts are nothing to worry about under normal circumstances but we would like to show him and these warts are enormous!!! So we decided to try the vaccine.

The vet removed a few of his warts, not a very nice process for the poor little bull and sent them off to a laboratory where they made a vaccine from the warts.

When the vaccine arrived we injected 1cc under the skin that day, 1cc a week later and 1cc a month after that.

I am ecstatic to tell you that a few days after the third dose one large wart has disappeared, so fingers crossed it looks as if it will work!!!

Has anyone else ever tried a wart vaccine, or anything similar? What were the results?

What wart treatments do other owners use that has worked well?

Are warts often a problem in Dexters or were we just unlucky?

Stephanie

[natmadaboutdexters]

We don't 'dry off' our cows, I just separate the calves from their mothers when they come in for the winter. On the subject of warts, we had a couple of our friesian bulls get them once and called the vet out to them. Unfortunately I can't remember his advice but the warts did disappear eventually. We were selling them for beef so they had to look presentably in the sale ring. I think that the summer helps as they tend to rub their faces etc on fence posts which helps to wear away the warts. Has anyone one had any bad reactions to the Bluetongue vaccine this year? quite a few of my Dexters have got lumps on their necks within a week or two of the vaccine being injected. the lump does go down but I don't remember this happening last year.

Natasha

[Duncan MacIntyre]

On the Dry Cow Tubes front, they can be used in beef cattle but are not used nearly so often as in dairy cows. In most dairy herds their use is necessary both to treat residual infections from the last lactation and to prevent new infections during the dry period. They do not have anything to do with drying up the flow of milk - that comes by stopping milking or suckling.

For most suckler herds there is not much need to use the antibiotic or sealant type except for those dry during July, August and September - seasons get a bit mixed up nowadays but summer mastitis is generally associated with fly activity. If you have cows dry or heifers in calf at that time you should watch very carefully for any enlarged quarters. As has been said instant action is needed if you wish to prevent damage to the quarter affected - most are lost, and it can be a struggle to save the cow in severe cases. As I say fortunately most beef herds do not have a serious problem, but veterinary advice should be sought if you do. General anti-fly measures help, traditionally Stockholm tar applied two or three times weekly to the udder is great, Spoton or insecticidal sprays or tags help too. If your herd has a history of cases then it may be justified to use antibiotic or sealant or both tubes. The most extreme outbreak I ever saw involved 43 cases out of 120 suckler cows in August 1979. The farm had a history of problems and had used tubes. After getting the manufacturer's vet involved the advice was that the tubing should have been repeated after 3 weeks. Farmer overjoyed of course.

If you do encounter a case of summer mastitis get immediate help from your vet. If cases are spotted really early it can be justifiable to use expensive intravenous antibiotics to save thequarter but to be honest I find it difficult to justify in most suckler cows and most of the time the quarter is beyond saving before it is even spotted by the owner.

On the warts front, Dexters are probably no more or less susceptible to warts than other breeds. There are several different types caused by different varieties of virus - they are contagious hence the reluctance to accept them at shows and sales.
They will always disappear if you give them long enough, but as Stephanie says autogenous vaccine can be prepared by a laboratory, but it is always for use in the one animal from which the warts were removed, so it is expensive as an individual treatment, can be justified if you are in a hurry to show or sell.

Duncan

[domsmith]

Warts almost closed us down a few weeks back.

the finishing bulls have been in all winter and the warts had built up in certain animals, usually slightly smaller or weaker ones. i could probably trace the individuals back to pneumia cases last year.

some had quite alot and odd ones did not look pretty, but all the groups were thriving and in general excellent health.
i then got a call from the abattoir saying the OV wanted the warts dealing with as they were a threat to her staff. she did not want any of her staff catching them and being off sick.

as it happens there were only a hand full of stirks left with any serious warts, but i had to call our vet in. she went through the vaccine drill which sounded rediculous. by the time the vaccine was ready the bulls would be dead. Our vets were laughing about it.
she rang the OV told her we were taking action and that was the last we heard.

we turned out groups in the good weather at easter, any warts dispeared within a matter of a week or so. and i dont think we will need to worry about it until next year now.

dom

[Saffy]

Poisonous Plants – a complete change of direction but when an animal becomes ill or dies suddenly and there is no other obvious reason poisonous plants are often bandied about as the possible cause.

I have no problem identifying well known poisonous trees and bushes, such as yew, box, laurel, privet, rhododendron etc. I know that every part of the daffodil is poisonous but how often does a cow eat a daffodil anyway, ours are in the garden and down the sides of the drive? My assumption is that yew needs removing from anywhere any animal can touch it as if it takes the slightest amount it can die – just one tiny bite is enough and I recall that rhododendron is a cumulative poison, so whilst the animal may get away with the first few bites, the next tiny taste could be its last!

The poisonous plants I have most problem identifying are those most likely to be snuggled down hiding in the grass in my fields. Again I can identify ragwort no problem as it is shown as an illustration on so many equine websites but it is hard to find good illustrations of other plants and a list of how dangerous they actually are to the stock.

Can someone point me in the direction of such a list, with photographs please?

I ask now as a few days ago a young sheep dies – OK not so unusual you say, they probably had a committee meeting and decided it was her turn. However she was in perfect health, she came for her food a few hours earlier, no mastitis, no foot rot etc. The reason it got my interest is that we only have a handful of sheep anyway and our young and equally healthy ram died under exactly the same circumstances, in the same tiny field last autumn. So a poisonous plants guide would be useful to me right now. I have walked the field and can only find one possibility so far and don’t know what the plant is, I can’t find a pic of it anywhere.

Stephanie

P.S. If anyone wants to ask a question - please jump in I didn't start this thread just for me and I am hogging it a bit!!!

[Saffy]

This is the plant the sheep have been nibbling - sorry I know it is sheep but I am sure it is also relevent to Dexters which use the same field. :D

Very likely it is a perfectly safe plant but there was no signs of foot rot in either sheep that died which I believe often contributes to a heart attack, no sign of foul play, they were yards from the house anyway, had all injections, were in perfect condition, young and both came to the trough for food a few hours before dropping dead etc.





The smallest leaf I took from under the rest





This is the largest leaf that has not been eaten much.





The back of the leaf and the stems are hairy and sticky




Stephanie