Sudden Death

[wagra dexters]

We found that we had lost a cow yesterday, one whose breeding was unique within the herd. She had been checked Saturday evening by a well trusted employee who said that she and her two companions were well. We arrived home 24 hours later and Echo was dead.
We will never know what killed her because the weather is very warm and moist, and she was in the half acre behind the pub. We couldn't let her get revolting and fly-blown with being in town so close to neighbours.
Graham and a friend on the shire checked her for gunshot then used heavy machinery to dig a hole and bury her in the bush. Whatever killed her, she must have died on her feet, and set like a statue when she dropped. She had buckled at the knees and hind fetlocks, and rested on her mid-underline in perfect symmetry, like a sphinx but with her chin on the ground. Her feet hadn't moved and she couldnt have had any death twitches or she would have toppled. She had blood from the nose.
Not pulpy kidney because she was up to date with her vaccine, so maybe a massive heart attack or embolism perhaps. Any other ideas?
She was due to have her first calf on the 16th this month, had started to make an udder, but if she had died calving there would have been signs of stuggle. She is a huge loss and we feel we have been kicked in the stomach, but it seems she had no time to suffer, and it also seems we would not have been able to save her if we'd been here.
I have to ask, ... Why her?? Why her when we have ten others on our sales list for this year!! Grrrrrr.
Margaret.

[Saffy]

Hello Margaret,

So sorry to hear that you have lost Echo and with no idea what it could have been - heartbreaking.

It is all the more needling that you didn't see the cattle yourselves BUT as she dropped like that there was very likely nothing to see and nothing that could have been done.

We had one just like it once many years ago and funnily enough we were away and had left our milking herd with the herdsman. She died in the same sort of position with her nose on the floor in front of her according to him.
Stephanie



Edited By Saffy on 1291650494

[Broomcroft]

Bad luck Margaret, very sorry to hear this story. I wonder what it might have been to leave her lying like that?

[Duncan MacIntyre]

In UK every sudden death in cattle which cannot be explained should be investigated for anthrax, but presumably very unlikley in your area.
Bracken poisoning in areas where the bracken fern grows
Other plant poisoning such as hemlock, yew
Embolisms from previously unnoticed focus of infection eg liver abscess,
Lightnening strike
Electocution
Magnesium staggers though usually struggle
Other clostirdial infection - depends on what your pulpy kidney vaccine covers
Peracute septicaemia
Various other ciculatory or CNS disasters

are a few of the possible causes we would consider here.

It is always a dreadful shock to find such a thing. Fortunately these are usually one off happenings, but very upsetting nevertheless. I once lost a heifer less than a month from calving because a branch fell off a yew tree and landed in field. Yew trees do not usually shed branches but this one had a heavy growth of ivy which pulled it down. I had 7 cattle in the field so was lucky only lost one as the others were eating the ivy off the yew branch when I found them.

Duncan

[wagra dexters]

Thank you all for your kind words.
CNS, Duncan? This is the same heifer who had the neuro-fibroma removed from her eyebrow 12 months ago, as commented on in Tim's earlier post 'viral papiloma'.
The vaccine is 7in1 so her death was probably not a clostridial. No external source of danger in the paddock.
All hypothetical, but an interesting distraction to contemplate until the shock wears off.
Margaret

[Minnie]

Hi Margaret,

I'm so sorry to hear about your heifer. I know how you feel we just lost one of ours with tick, terrible to find her dying and she never had any females to carry on her genes.

Like you I thought why her, she's got such good bloodlines and is different. It's not that you wish it on any others but you do wonder.

I was thinking lightening, it would be such a shock to find her in that position.

Vicki