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Identifying sick calves early is an important skill to have and one that takes time. Join our discussion about what to look for when you are looking for sick beef and dairy calves.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[background music]
[cow moos]
Joe: Welcome to The Moosroom everybody. We are recording this time as we start. Wasn't recording our intro last time. Caught it in the first couple of seconds, which is great. Big update. Big update. Emily's here, we found her. She's here.
Emily: I'm not dead. Yay.
Joe: We got her. She claims that she told us she was going to be gone. Brad and I--
Emily: I did. No, it's--
Brad: No, I don't think so. I don't think so.
Emily: What this very simply comes down to is the fact that neither of you listen to me. Also, I would remind you that you are both able to look at my work calendar, so you can see when I am gone.
Joe: I don't do that.
Brad: My Google Calendar is right here on paper.
Emily: Yes, your paper planner.
Brad: Old-fashioned.
Joe: Yes, it wasn't on my schedule.
Emily: Anyways, I'm here. Hooray.
Joe: She's here.
Emily: I'm back.
Joe: We are happy.
Emily: After what? A two-week hiatus for me.
Joe: In that time, we need a huge update because Brad and I have held off asking about the trip, just so we could talk about it right now.
Emily: Yay.
Joe: Give us the rundown on your figure skating trip to Canada.
Emily: Yes. At the very end of October, I went to Canada, so Toronto, Mississauga area for Skate Canada International. It's an international figure skating competition. It's a part of the Grand Prix of Figure Skating. I won't get into all the mechanics of it. If you've listened for a while, you probably know that I'm a really big figure skating fan, have been for years. People always ask if I skate myself, the answer is yes, but not well. I just skate for fun. Not for any real purpose other than that, but that's a good purpose anyways.
Yes. Went with a friend of mine that I haven't been able to see for many years due to COVID and all of that. It was a lot of fun. I got to see the current men's world champion, so that was very exciting. Got to see Starr Andrews, an American woman, win her first Grand Prix medal, she got silver, so that was also very exciting to be there for. I don't know what else you want to know, but it was a lot of fun.
Joe: It sounds like a blast. I didn't realize there was a Grand Prix of Figure Skating. That's new to me, and I'm glad I know that now. It looks like a grueling schedule, like they're constantly competing.
Emily: They don't all compete six weeks in a row.
Joe: I see.
Emily: There's six events. They compete at two of the six.
Joe: Okay, that makes much more sense. I was looking like, "This is rough."
Emily: No, that would be way too much, but yes, figure skating happens besides just at the Olympics
Joe: There's a lot of them.
Emily: That's my main message for people.
[laughter]
Joe: There's a lot of sports like that. Curling comes to mind right away. Has anyone watched curling other than at the Olympics?
Emily: No. Oh, Brad.
Joe: Brad has watched curling.
Brad: In person Mapleton, Minnesota
Joe: In person is different. Curling is fun.
Brad: It's fun. It's fun.
Joe: Thank you for the update. We are glad you are here, you're alive, and you had a good time.
Emily: Thank you. Yes, I'm glad for all of those things as well.
Joe: We better get to it, the real part of the show where we talk about cows. We could probably sit here and BS for quite a while longer, but I think it's time to get to cows. We are going to talk about how to identify sick calves today. It's actually a question I've gotten a couple times in the last month or so, about how do I know a calf is really sick? How do I know what they're sick with? Those kind of things. Why is there confusion between pneumonia and scours a lot of times? There's a lot to get into.
Emily: How do I know when I need to call my vet?
Joe: Exactly, that too. That is something I write in my protocols when we make flowcharts and decision trees. There's a lot that people can do on their own, and that's the goal, but there is a time where it is probably time to call your vet on some of these cases. We'll get to that too. We'll get to that too how to call.
Emily: I had to put that plug in just for you, Joe.
Joe: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Emily: [chuckles]
Joe: Part of identifying sick calves is you got to look at them. You can't just leave them alone and not see them, and then expect to be able to figure out who's sick. Brad, how do you guys work it up there when you've got a bunch of calves, especially when you guys calves seasonally and you've got just a big slug of calves, obviously, you're feeding them, how do you teach your employees to be looking at calves, and when to do it and how to do it?
Brad: It's not easy. We all know that. I think there's a few things. Obviously, we look at them while they're feeding them morning and night, but we go back through and look at things in the afternoon, maybe when we're bedding, when we're giving water. I think a lot of it, you can tell right away which calves are not feeling well when you're feeding them. If you're there twice a day, they don't come up right away, they're a little slow getting up, they're maybe not drinking as fast. You can get a picture on those calves right away, especially if they're in a group. You got draw six in a group, and five of them get up and run to the feeder, and there's one hanging back. It's like, "Maybe you're not feeling good."
Sometimes it's not as easy, but we weigh our calves too. I know there's not a lot of people that probably weigh their calves. Some farms do. I know some farms that do weigh their calves not every week, but sporadically, to see what their gains are, but we do weigh them so we can look at gains right away to see if things are-- Because sometimes, you can't tell if they're sick. It looks okay, but it's like, "Whoa, you only gained a pound a week, what's going on?" Some calves are easy, some calves are not
Emily: Something, and this applies to a lot of different things, but detection is really a function of frequency of observation. I like what you said, Brad, if you are feeding calves twice a day, you're observing them quite frequently. That's always going to make a difference for detecting anything, any issue with any animal really. It's something I wanted to add there too because, Brad, I've seen your calves in action. You have some frisky ones, and so I would imagine too calves that are a little less aggressive at the feeder, especially if they're usually first one up there, that's what I think of. Growing up on my farm too, I was the calf feeder, so those were the types of things I would look for.
Brad: [00:07:08] We've had a few calves that we've been watching here lately. One of them was a small little Jersey calf. She wasn't really drinking. She's three weeks old and she didn't really have a sucking reflex, so we had to take a few extra steps to make sure she was getting in nutrition. We think maybe she had a gut ache or some little scours issue going on, so we took care of that, and she's doing much better now.
Then we had a Holstein calf that's-- This one's odd. We're not really sure what happened, but it doesn't stand up. It's like, "What's going on?" After a couple days, then here's your shout out, Joe, we called the vet to come check it out. Its tendons were just, I don't know, they're stiff and didn't really move its legs and couldn't stand up. We gave it some antibiotics and steroids to loosen up the muscles and help it-- Obviously, I spend a little time so it gets up and can stand and the vet said it'll be fine. It's just one of those things where it's like, "What's going on? Why does the calf not want to stand up? It drinks." There are some weird things sometimes that happen too.
Joe: You want to identify a problem as quickly as possible. Like Brad said in a group setting, fairly easy to tell when a calf is really off because they just don't get up, they're a little slow, they don't get to the feeder as fast as everybody else. It can be really subtle though sometimes, especially in a group setting like that, I mean that calf might get up with the group and be there already at the feeder, just because they want to stay with the group. You give them access to the feeder, and it might just stand there with the group because it wants to be with everyone, but everyone's eating. If you don't take the time to actually look and check that everyone's eating, it might just stand there with its head next to the nipple.
The same thing happens with cows too. A lot of DA cows that I've seen, they say they're eating, but they're not. They're just standing at the bunk with everybody else because it's something they want to do, but they don't actually. If you sit there and watch them, they might nose the feed a little bit, but they're not actually taking any bites. The same thing happens with calves.
Getting ahead of it, noticing those little things early is really good. Calves are really time-driven, just like all cows. A lot of times, when you come to the barn and they're already sitting there waiting for you because they know it's time to eat. Even if there's a calf that's just not sitting there waiting for you, that can be a really early sign that maybe you need to check on that calf. It's not 100%, but we want to try to pick up these little things as well and get ahead of the problem before we have a calf that's really, really, really ill.
Emily: A question I have, I feel like the context we've been talking in here is mostly dairy and we have to think about beef as well. The first thing I think of when I think about especially beef calves, you probably don't see them as often as you see dairy calves. What are some things, Joe, that we can be looking for or should at least be aware of with beef calves, especially those that are out on pasture with mom, we're not seeing them much?
Joe: It's a lot more difficult and the signs are even more subtle because when you do see those animals, they are trying to hide any illness from you usually, especially if you're wandering around in green coveralls and you look like the vet. I've gone through situations where we were running full speed on the four-wheelers and bulldogging calves off the side. They're really sick, but they're running full speed and you could barely catch them, and you're still having to IV them fluids and get them all sorts of things to make them better and get ahead of something. It is very difficult. A lot more subtle.
I think a lot of times when we're looking at calves on the beef side, the supplies in the feedlot as well if you've got older calves, I like to stay in the back a long ways where the cattle don't really even feel my presence, and just watch how things are going because they will look 100% different, to the point where-- It sounds dumb, but I used to carry a pair of binos in my truck so I could look from a long ways off and see what was going on. That's part of it.
Then you have to start looking at tails and see if you can identify what's a consistent scours problem versus just a little bit of poop on the tail. Very, very subtle signs of that calf and that mom cow usually lagging behind the rest of the group when they move somewhere. It's very, very subtle. I think the first step is to try to observe things from as far away as possible to really see what the true dynamics of the group are and what the calves are doing. After that, it's really difficult. You got to put a lot of work into the prevention and management, so you just have to worry about it as little as possible.
Brad: I think one tool that probably everybody should have that maybe gives you a sign about what's happening is a thermometer. Whether that might be a cheap one, some people have a little more expensive, a little more accurate ones, but definitely a thermometer. That's the thing that we run to right away. If we got a sick calf, boom, temp it. See what the temperature is, so we can figure out if it's going on. Because if it's maybe not feeling well and it only has 101 temperature, it's like, "Maybe there's something else happening or whatever might be going on, injury of some other factor besides a scours or a pneumonia or something."
I think the temperature is maybe a tell sign. It's not always perfect because we'll get calves in the summertime here that'll be showing 104 internal temperature and it's because they're running around the pen and they're hot and it's 100 degrees outside. You have to think about it when you're using that. I think a thermometer. We temp everything right away. Right away.
Joe: That's a huge piece. I've worked hard to try to train clients when they'd call in. "I need to temp." For a long time it was, "Hey, I've got this sick cow. I got this, I got this, or this. What should I give it?" "If you don't have a temperature, that's the first step. Call me back when you get it," because it really does dictate where we go with antibiotics. I think most of our treatment protocols should be centered around whether or not the calf has a fever because if it doesn't have a fever, a lot of times, it's really difficult to justify antibiotic use. Then we focus on other things that we would focus on anyway, but we can save the money on the antibiotics and potentially do better by that animal.
Because when we give antibiotics to an animal that doesn't need it, we're changing a lot of what's going on in that animal with the bacteria that are present that we may want. Some of those bacteria are good. I think that's a huge point. That's perfect, Brad, because a thermometer is a great tool, especially on a dairy. If you're worried, if you're thinking twice about a calf and it looks at you funny, just jump in there and temp it. Not hard to do. Just make sure. That's the first place to start when we're looking at sick calves, is try to get a temp. That's where I start on everything, whatever's sick.
Emily: Along with temperature, and we talked a little bit about the observation piece, and I feel like we were really talking on behavior with that. With observation too, just looking at how is the calf standing? Are they breathing really heavy? Look at their nose. Do they have a lot of discharge? Look at their ears, look at their eyes. Because we know we can look for signs of dehydration and other things like that just with some of, doing what I would call a quick physical examination of the animal. Look at those areas that we associate with sickness, so eyes, ears, mouth, breathing, what's going on on the back end too, those types of things. That can tell you a lot.
I think sometimes we're so quick to just go, "Something's wrong." Joe, you brought up a good point with the temperature. That and some of these other observations too can help give yourself as a producer or your veterinarian just more to work with. More context. If we see this, but not this, we can rule out this issue. As much information as you can gather about what's happening is really going to help with diagnosis and treatment and getting that done a lot faster.
Joe: There's lots of tools out there. One of my favorites comes from Wisconsin. It's a calf health scoring tool. It looks at exactly what Emily just said, eyes, ears, nose, fecal scores, and temperatures, that kind of thing, so you can see and you can assign a score to that calf, and then you can work that into protocols. It keeps everyone on the same page about what that calf looks like. You can also mark improvement. If you go back and rework that calf through that scoring system, you can say, "Okay, yesterday we scored this, but actually, we scored better today." We know treatment or intervention, whatever we're doing is working, which I really like as well.
Yes, that's perfect, eyes, ears, nose. One of the things I look at a lot is respiratory effort. Increased rate is important when they're breathing faster than normal. Obviously, panting isn't a great sign, but effort is a big thing as well. How hard are they breathing and how much effort are they putting into moving that air in and out of the body? The tricky part is when we get into how do you differentiate between what's going on between pneumonia and scours. That becomes really tricky because when we have a calf that has scours, they get acidotic. They have too much acid in their bloodstream.
To correct that, they need to get rid of CO2. CO2 is what we breathe out, and that's acidic. They breathe out more, which results in a calf that looks like it's breathing hard and fast, when in fact, they're doing so not because they have a lung issue, but because they have scours. A lot of times when we see antibiotics getting thrown at calves with scours, it's one of two things. They either have scours for real and they didn't actually need the antibiotic. That can be determined by temperature, or that they think they're pneumonias, but they're actually scours. That's a big difference.
It comes down to saving a lot of money on antibiotics for real and focusing on the things that actually cure scours, which are hydration number one and pain control because we're not usually dealing with a bacteria. It's one of three things 99% of the time. Rotavirus, coronavirus, or Cryptosporidium when we're talking scours. None of which are bacteria, so an antibiotic isn't really going to solve the problem, unless I have reason to believe that there's something else secondary going on, which is where our temperature comes in.
You can see how it gets complicated quickly. I think identifying scours correctly is actually more difficult than it seems. Seem fairly easy to say this calf has diarrhea or it doesn't, but when you really start looking at a calf and you don't actually see it defecate, and you're trying to go off of all the other signs that are in that pen, especially in a group setting, which is something I want to ask Bradley, it makes it a lot more difficult. In an individual pen, I can see the walls of that pen. I can see that that manure in that pen belongs to that calf. It's lots of different situation in a group pen, Brad.
Brad: Group is it takes a little more observation to find those calves sometimes because you don't have those true signs if they're defecating, or got manure on the sides. Or even if they're eating grain or drinking water, it's all group based, so you can't really tell. Sometimes you almost have to just sit there and watch them for 10 or 15 minutes to figure out what's going on, especially even if after you feed them, that's-- Feeding times might be one of the best things. Obviously, if they come up or just an hour after feeding time, you can tell what's happening.
Really watching them throughout the day. It doesn't have to take long. You don't have to run back every hour to look at these calves middle of the day. Watch them for 5, 10 minutes in a group just to see what's happening. I think you can get a lot about what's going on because it's not easy. It's not easy when you're finding group calves. More observation probably is the ticket to making it work. It seems to do fine here when we add a few more observations.
Joe: As we push these calves harder, and we're advocating for you to feed more and more milk and more and more volume. More liquid in usually means more liquid out. Just because they're loose, that doesn't define scours for me because yes, we put a lot of liquid in, there's probably going to be a little more liquid coming out. For those of you who have kids, you're very aware of that. While your kid is still on just milk, things aren't usually solid coming out the back. I think you got to keep that in mind, assess the whole calf, incorporate temperature into that.
Then one we need to really figure out is hydration status, because hydration status of the animal itself can tell you a ton about what's going on. We covered a little bit about looking at eyes. When eyes start to look sunken into the face, that is a sign of dehydration. Skin tent is something that's really easy to do. If you grab some skin on the animal, some loose skin, and you pull it out and let it go, within a short two seconds, that should fall flat like it never happened. If you got an animal that is dehydrated, they are going to have an actual skin tent. It'll stay out and stay tented for longer.
That only happens above about 5% dehydration. You can still have a calf that's pretty dehydrated, 5% dehydration before they're going to show a skin tent, but they're probably going to look off with their eyes a little bit. Because they're that dehydrated, something's got to be going on. They might not eat as well, a little slower, all these other things, and they can still be 5% or less dehydrated. You're not really going to be able to pick it up. Skin tent is one.
Then presence of a suckle reflex. Standing. Brad mentioned he had a calf that didn't stand. Now, that sounds like it was more of a physical joint and tendon issue, but calves that don't stand, obviously super weak, usually really dehydrated, 10% or more, and then a presence of a suckle reflex. If the calf is still has a pretty strong suckle reflex and all of its extremities are pretty warm, then I think that we're usually under 10% dehydrated.
When we're having trouble standing or getting weak, that suckle reflex is weak or starts to go away and our extremities get cold, then we're in the true danger zone of over 10% dehydrated. Once we get to 14%, 15% dehydrated, that's not conducive with life. You got to act fast on that. Those are all things you can check. Skin tent being one of them for hydration status, but then gum color and how wet the gums are, how moist they are because they should be pink, quite wet, not tacky at all. In a calf that's pretty dehydrated, that mouth can be kind of cold even, and then the gum tissue can be really pale pink or even white, and then it can be tacky. It feels like there's just not much moisture in that mouth, and that's another sign of dehydration.
All those things add up to-- I usually associate more severe dehydration with scours because they're losing so much out the backend. Then we play games with listening to lungs to decide on pneumonia versus scours, and then add in temperature to decide when we treat with antibiotics. Otherwise, the focus is rehydrate that calf, take care of any pain that's there, and get electrolytes reestablished with our rehydration, and then that's the best thing you can do for that calf.
One of the other things, we talked a lot about scours, pneumonia, and we're talking about a pretty basic physical exam. We're talking about looking at eyes, looking at nose, ears, behavioral things, skin tent, checking gums for color and how tacky they are or lack of tackiness, hopefully. Then, observing the calves environment, looking at fecal material, those kind of things. One of the other things that I like to do on every calf is reach down and feel the navel, even out to a month, maybe even more old, to look and see if there's a navel infection.
It shouldn't be hot. That's one thing. The navel should not be hot, and it should be fairly small. I like to think of that navel being about the size of a number 2 pencil, maybe even a little smaller. If it's bigger than that, and/or hot, or if there's a hernia there in a little bit older calf where you can actually feel that it's quite big and you can't really find the cord at all because something has fallen into that space, then we've got a potential issue there as well that we need to clear up. That navel infection comes back to dipping navels really well and making sure that happens. When you're in a rush, sometimes it doesn't happen very well. Bradley.
Brad: [chuckles] Yes. We see that sometimes. It's always tough, especially if you've got a lot of calves coming. Some days there's 10 or 12 here and it's like, oh, you're trying to do it in a hurry to just get it done. Once in a while, we do have some larger navels. Sometimes they go away. A few times, we've had the vet out to lance them and take care of them, but I think if we just spent the extra 10 seconds per calf to make sure that it was done correctly, we probably would eliminate a lot of the navel infections that we have here and that you see it at other farms, definitely.
Joe: If you are wondering where hernias come from, when that navel hernia usually starts with an infection. At some point, that infection prevented that body wall from closing appropriately, and then you get a hernia. Those are not fun to deal with, especially if they get big enough. The surgery is not super difficult, but it's still a surgery, and it's expensive, and it's not great for that calf, it costs you money, all from just taking that extra 10, 15, 20 seconds and really making sure you got good coverage on that navel, and that it dries out, and that calf stays nice and dry.
Navel infection is a big thing, and it's something that in a basic exam, very easy to just reach down, just feel how big the cord is inside that navel and decide if that could be a factor as well. Sometimes that cord can be pretty hot and big, and that calf might not have a fever systemically. It's something to keep in mind, but it is painful and can cause some issues.
Brad: There's always other issues that we talk about. Sometimes there's injuries, fluky things that can happen in-- [crosstalk]
Interviewer: Yes, what should I do if my calf breaks its leg?
Brad: Have the vet out
Joe: Call me. Yes, don't call me, call your vet.
Brad: Yes, I think sometimes there, you have to call the vet. When the animal welfare is at stake for this calf, you need to fix the issue right away. Yes, you should call your vet and take care of the problem.
Joe: Some of those situations where you call your vet, it can change a little bit, depending on your skill level and how comfortable you are with treatment. If you're very comfortable finding a vein in that calf and IVing a calf, you can call your vet to get advice on what to do, and they may not necessarily have to come out. With those injuries, that's a little different, especially true breaks. They need to be casted if you want that animal to have a chance.
That's very successful, depending on the location of the break. I've casted a lot of animals and it works really, really, really well, as long as the break is far enough down. Situations where I like to call the vet down animals, any down animal. If they can't stand up and no suckle reflex, then you probably need an IV. Then yes, breaks, injuries like that, something like that where it needs something more extensive than a cobbled-together splint or anything. A true cast is the way to go with those.
Brad: Sometimes just texting a picture to your vet can save time and effort and a lot of things, especially if you text a picture, maybe the vet knows what's going to happen when it comes out and it just goes much faster. Sometimes, yes, we'll text a picture to the vet and go, "Okay." Sometimes they'll say, "Yes, we got it. We'll know what to do when we get out there."
Joe: Yes, it can save a lot of time and sometimes we have to come out to follow up, sometimes we don't. It all is dependent on having a current VCPR veterinary client-patient relationship to do some of those things. If you don't have one of those, it's really hard to justify receiving pictures and giving advice if we don't know your operation very well. Make sure you have one of those. Again, that's going to become even more important in June next year, which we covered as over-the-counter antibiotics go away. Another reason to have your VCPR current.
Emily: One thing that I don't want to talk about because it's not a fun part, but I think it's something that we have to be aware of when dealing with sick animals. Sometimes we need to euthanize. Brad already mentioned like if the welfare of the animal is so poor, sometimes that decision has to be made. I guess I'm curious especially, Joe, from your perspective as a vet, if that is what you have to do, if that's what's going to be the best-case scenario for everyone, if you feel comfortable doing it yourself, is that something you can do? Should you call a vet?
I think if I were in that situation, I don't know if I could do it. I'd be afraid of not doing it correctly and causing more harm. In situations like that, can vets be helpful or at least provide advice?
Joe: Absolutely, yes. Euthanasia is something that is incredibly important. Doing it well and doing it correctly is definitely something that you need training to do most of the time. Because when it goes wrong and it's done incorrectly, that can be super traumatizing for everyone involved. Yes, at some point it's the right decision and you got to do it. My thought with calves usually, unless it's a bad break, really high in the leg or something super obvious on the traumatic side, sometimes we have these calves that are born with huge umbilical hernias, actually, they're born with intestines on the ground already, things like that where recovery is really, really, really low, yes, then it's time to euthanize. You can either have the vet out to do it or you can do that yourself.
My preferred method is with just a small firearm. If you're worried about having a firearm on your place, then they make captive bolt guns, which can fire a bolt with a 22 blank shell, a bolt that's actually doesn't go anywhere. It stays within the machine using a series of slides and bumpers, and that can work as well. The thing I'll say is, unless it's one of those really drastic situations that I said, is that IV fluids and rehydrating a calf can bring a calf that looks almost dead back to life.
If you're willing to, and even if it looks awful, getting an IV in that calf with warm fluids and getting them at least that to start, you'd be surprised how bad a calf can look and come back and look great 10, 15 minutes later even. I encourage people, unless it's one of those situations like I talked about, like a bad break or a really, really bad injury in some other way, or something that's clearly wrong on a defect side congenitally, then I'd say it's worth calling the vet or at least trying to get IV fluids in that animal because they can come back from the brink. I've done it a lot of times. They look awful and they still come back.
I encourage people to try that first, and if you can't do that yourself, the vet's already there. If it doesn't go well or if it's not going to work out, the vet's there to be able to provide the euthanasia service for you. Yes, I think we'll stop there because there's a lot more we could get into, but that's plenty.
Emily: All right. Are we wrapping this whole thing? All right, let's do it. If you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can also provide question, comments, and maybe not scathing rebuttals by calling our voice mail, and you may be featured on a future episode of The Moos Room. That number is 612-624-3610. You can also find us on Twitter @UMNFarmSafety and @UMNmoosroom, and on Instagram @umn W-C-R-O-C dairy. Visit our website, extension.umn.edu. I knew I was forgetting something.
Joe: That's lot of points.
Emily: Bye.
Brad: Bye. Bye.
[music]
Emily: Wait, Brad, you unmuted. Do you have something? No, you're just throwing us off. Cool. Awesome, wonderful.
[00:33:24] [END OF AUDIO]
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