Cow Health Articles
Cows: 44 articles
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Pink Eye in Cattle
Pink eye cases are on the rise as the summer progresses, especially with a hot dry summer that allows for fly populations to grow exponentially. Pink eye issues can reduce dry matter intake and can impact growth rates…
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Managing Fly Populations in Dairy Barns
Managing fly populations in dairy operations is a constant concern for most producers. High fly populations can cause stress for the animals, and negatively affect dry matter intake and milk production. Flies can also act as disease vectors and can carry pathogens including mastitis causing bacteria.
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Fly Control
Warmer temperatures bring the emergence of flies. Under the right conditions, every fly in the early spring, can result in up to 64 million flies by August.
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Stethoscope School – Tips to Help Make a Good Diagnosis
In this article, we are going to present a medical case that highlights the importance of a stethoscope in diagnosing digestive disorders in dairy cattle.
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Scours in Older Calves
While older calves can still be affected by all the causative agents that affect newborn and younger calves, such as E coli, Rota and Corona virus, Clostridium, and even Cryptosporidium, calves that are older are typically less susceptible to clinical disease from these pathogens.
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Calf Navel Health
Recent studies in Canada show that between 19-27% of calves can have an enlarged or abnormal umbilicus (navel). It is important to have a navel care protocol for both replacement heifer calves and bull calves that you plan to sell.
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Kexxtone - Good for Cows, NOT so Good for Dogs
Recently, there was a tragic case where a couple of dogs chewed on a plastic Kexxtone bolus that had been regurgitated from a cow on a farm. Sadly, the result was fatal.
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Navel Care in Newborn Calves – Another Option?
During parturition or calving, the umbilical cord separates from the fetus due to contraction of the smooth muscle around the umbilicus, which then exposes the umbilical structures to the external environment after calving. This exposure can allow environmental pathogens like Streptococcus species and E coli to enter the umbilical cord, causing infection.
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Sexed-Sorted Semen and Insemination Timing
Reproductive efficiency is an important factor for successful and profitable dairy herds. In the last twenty years, sexed-sorted semen has become a popular tool for producers to increase the rate of genetic progress, manage heifer inventory, and allow for expanded use of beef semen in their herd.
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Paired Housing for Calves – The Research Summary Breakdown
With the introduction of the new Dairy Code of Practice, paired housing of calves is going to be a requirement for all dairy farmers in the future (likely January 2033). This has been a hot topic with various opinions on how feasible or beneficial this change will be.
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The Cost of Purulent Vaginal Discharge (PVD) or Dirty Cows
Reproductive performance is one of the most significant drivers of profitability in dairy herds. Recent research continues to highlight the hidden economic drain of purulent vaginal discharge (PVD), a common postpartum uterine disorder, and its financial impact within just one lactation cycle.
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Getting a Slow Calf Going – Can Caffeine Help?
We are soon going to be getting into beef calving season, and with the extra cold temperatures we have been experiencing this winter, it may be harder to get calves active after birth. Here are a few tips to keep in mind this season – including a surprising boost you can get at the gas station!
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Milking Routine
Milking routine is something that is tried and true on most farms. There may be small things that are making a larger impact on your milk quality as cows produce more milk and the system become more stressed.
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Pneumonia Prevention Product
Now there is an exciting new combination product called Bovilis Nasalgen 3 PMH. This product combines both the viral components of Inforce 3, and the bacterial components in Once PMH, into one convenient product.
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Ensuring the Effectiveness of Vaccines in Preventing Disease in Your Dairy Herd
Vaccines play a key role in preventing costly diseases like pneumonia. However, vaccines must be used, handled, and stored correctly to ensure their effectiveness.
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Pneumonia Drugs and Vaccines – A Review
...with damp weather and fluctuating temperatures calves and cows have been struggling so an overview of the available drugs and vaccines seems prudent.
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Mastitis
Milk quality has been a hot topic lately. Learn more about the five main points of mastitis control.
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Pneumonia in Calves
As many of you have experienced over the years, fluctuating cool temperatures brings on an increase in stress level and disease in young calves. Pneumonia cases in particular are common this time of year...
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Effects of Meloxicam In Fresh Cows
Each cow in your herd that freshens, experiences numerous physiological changes in her body. Having a plan for managing these changes are important for your bottom line because they can impact your cow’s risk of developing certain diseases such as ketosis, metritis, mastitis and LDA.
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Protecting Your Calves From Pneumonia and Scours
As most of you all are aware, raising healthy calves is the cornerstone of a productive and profitable herd. Two of the most common and challenging health issues faced by young calves are pneumonia and scours…
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Managing Fly Populations In Barns
As the weather is starting to warm up, we are starting to see flies in the barns and now is the time to think about fly control strategies. As a fly was buzzing around my head on a farm call this weekend, I thought to…
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The Benefits of Vitamin B12
We are experiencing extensive backorders on products, including Vitamaster and Newcells – two commonly used products for ketotic or off-feed cows. We have stocked vitamin B12 for a few years now, but thought it would be…
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Dextrose for Ketosis Treatment – New Study
A December 2020 study in the Journal of Dairy Science set out to determine how much effect the addition of dextrose IV has in treating ketotic cows. It has long been established that glycol treatment for at least 3 days is the most important part of therapy for ketosis...
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Treatment of Calf Scours
Many of you have at some point struggled with scouring calves. There are many different causes of calf scours such as E coli, Rotavirus, Coronavirus, Cryptosporidium, Coccidiosis to name a few. There are certain management practices, vaccines and other strategies to help prevent certain specific types of scours...
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Passive Transfer of Immunity Testing
We know how important it is that calves get good quality colostrum as quickly as possible. Often we check the efficacy of colostrum management by checking for failure of passive transfer when we are dealing with…
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Ontario Bovine Practitioners Update Meeting: Relevant News
This month the OABP held their annual update meetings virtually to provide Ontario Bovine Veterinarians with relevant research and industry information.
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New Product For Treating Bovine Respiratory Disease: Zeleris
The mainstays of treating respiratory disease in cattle include two things…
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Inforce-3 in Fresh Cows
A novel use for intranasal vaccines is being researched by the makers of Inforce-3. It is proposed that administering this vaccine to a cow at freshening can help upregulate local immune responses and reduce the…
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Cystic Cows: Using Progesterone Implants
Among the most difficult animals to get pregnant are the cystic cows. These days, cystic cows can be difficult to detect. They are usually found at pregnancy check because they failed to display heats. Gone are the days…
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Hardware Disease: The Elusive Diagnosis
Our vets have seen several cases of suspect hardware disease recently. Hardware disease is one of the oldest diseases described in cattle, and while it is common, it can be relatively hard to confidently diagnose.
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Bovine Respiratory Disease in Calves – What is it Costing You?
Preweaning pneumonia in dairy calves continues to be a struggle for many producers. A recent study in 2022 by Uyama et al of 147 dairy farms and almost 8000 dairy calves across 5 provinces in Canada demonstrated that…
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Blood Calcium and Its Association With Prognosis for Recovery from LDA Surgery
We know that calcium in the fresh period plays such a big role in determining the outcome of a dairy cow’s lactation. Low blood calcium has been shown repeatedly to be linked to increased risk for adverse events in the…
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Mastitis Vaccines
This has been a bad summer for mastitis due to the heat and humidity. Warm, wet environments combined with heat stress makes for lots of cases of clinical mastitis and a rise in SCC.
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How Calf Age Can Help You Decide On How To Treat Scours
One of the most common questions we get is “what is the best treatment for calves with scours?” And the first question I usually ask is “how old is the calf when it first starts to scour?” Without sending a fecal sample…
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Managing Digital Dermatitis
A recent continuing education webinar for Ontario bovine vets about cattle foot health covered a wide range of lameness issues. Some of the key takeaways focused on management of digital dermatitis (or strawberry foot…
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Prevention & Care of The Udder Cleft In Dairy Cows with Intra Repiderma
Content copied from Whitepaper: Prevention & Care of the Udder Cleft In Dairy Cows with Intra Repiderma. Release date: October 12 2020 IntracareB.V., Veghel, The Netherlands…
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Updating the Dairy Code of Practice
The public comment period for the new Dairy Code of Practice has closed as of January 2, 2022. The committee will be reviewing the document and making changes before its publication in early 2023. We have had a few…
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ProAction Update
As most of you are aware by now, the Dairy Code of Practice was updated recently with a number of changes to take effect over the next number of years. Below is a list of the key changes that are effective as of April…
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Colostrum
We’ve all heard at one time about the importance of feeding colostrum to calves and that the ingestion and absorption of high quantities of antibodies or IgG is vital to the health of the newborn calf. We also all know…
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Calf Health
If Canadian farms are anything like the American dairy’s surveyed in 2016, many farmers don't provide drinking water to their calves from day one. I can understand why, as even when it is provided, they will often drink…
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Ketosis Diagnosis and Treatment
Every so often, it is good to review the treatment of common diseases. Ketosis has now become the #1 metabolic disease of dairy cattle, far surpassing milk fever and acidosis. In fact, an Ontario study found that 43% of…
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Feeding Calves More Pays Off in the Long Run
The Canadian National Dairy Study from 2015 showed that on average, dairy farmers are feeding their calves a maximum of 8 litres of milk or milk replacer a day. However, a third of producers are feeding less than 6…
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Cystic Ovaries in Dairy Cattle – Causes and Treatment Protocols
Cystic ovaries are a fairly common finding on fresh cow checks at herd healths, and can have a significant impact on the success of your breeding program if left undetected and untreated. Cows with cysts do not ovulate…
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Colostrum Replacement and Supplement Products
Good colostrum management is one of the most important factors in getting calves off to a good start in life. An easy way to remember the main considerations for colostrum is the 5 Q’s…
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