Analysis of news article in Alberta Farmer

[rkaiser]

High level of manganese in milk replacer hey.. Not one simple answer to the BSE question folks...Milk replacer could have caused some of the cases and pour on insecdicides could have caused others. Once a country begins to test, the opportunty to find other sources of metal imbalance will show as well. How about our own Alberta cases showing up in areas with environmental problems of there own.

[Kathy]

Not saying the milk replacer had nothing to do with the BSE, just that it was a source of imbalanced minerals at a time when the animals brain is developing rapidly.

Explain how a young heifer on our farm seems to have had a calf that was selenium deficient (? white muscle disease) while others have been OK? Did she not eat the minerals as much as the other cows?

We had a couple other oddities here, both within a few days of each other. We had an older cow (in great shape) give birth to a live healthy calf - except it has a short kinked tail, and NO eyeballs. That same week a first calf heifer had a live calf with a short kinked tail, its rectum coming out the umbilical area, and NO anus (opening at the back).

The timing of these two calves indicates that they were both exposed to something in the environment that may have deformed their calves at that particular stage of development. Then again, maybe it is just flukes of nature.

Any other ranchers having such problems, please feel free to call me or send me a message here. I can have no idea if there are occurrences of a similar nature in nearby herds, unless we communicate. A pattern can't be found without looking for it.

A reason cannot be narrowed down without viewing all possible evidence. Vets office was useless.

Transmission experiments (BSE CWD et al) by prion researchers are so convulted and technically messed up, they are not, cannot, replicate natural consumption practices. The usage of natural growth hormones also stopped in the UK (synthetics were developed)... the pituitary gland bio-accumulates heavy metals... if you medically/pharmaceutically mess with the proteins you can potentially release the causative agent (metals) and redistribute them to new victims. Perhaps the Galloway cow was given beef growth hormones, and not the dairy cows? who knows. We will keep vigilant and learn as much as we can as we go. That is all we can do.

Have you read Mark Purdey's book, Animal Pharm? I can send you one, or you can check via the library system to get one... I've donated several dozen across the province.

[kato]

Interesting thread.

Just have a comment on this thought.

- and the CFIA and others don't like feeling helpless. They want control. They want GPS on all livestock trucks, they want to be able to inspect our farms, review our records, and tell us when and with what to vaccinate our animals.

There is already GPS on most trucks, at least those belonging to companies that have any size to them. My brother is a trucker, and his dispatcher can locate him any time he wants. It's not at the request of any government agency, either. It's the way these companies track their shipments.

[grassfarmer]

No Kathy, the galloway would not have been given growth hormone - it was well after the hormone ban in Europe and they wouldn't have been feeding it to a purebred potential female in any case.
I haven't read Purdey's book but will endeavor to do so. Will get it from the library - thanks for donating those.

As for birth abnormalities I have one that may interest you - it was back in the Chernobyl year ('86 was it?)The accident happened in May if I remember correctly and we had a few fall calvers that year (August) one of them had the strangest calf I ever saw. Head, shoulder and front legs were normal but it had a second pair of full size legs attached to the rib cage just behind the front legs. The back of the rib cage just tailed off into slime and cleansing. It was born dead of course and I just buried it in a hole on the hill. Was that a Chernoybl side affect or just one in a million?

[Kathy]

Kato, the question is, will the trucking companies share their information with everybody on the location of their trucks... as we are being asked to share our information on our cattle?

Tracking of cattle has worked, and continues to work well with branding and sales receipts. However, if you want to 'track' the products and meds used on/in the cattle and their effect upon the carcass/tissues then you need the ranchers/feedlots to tell ALL on a data base.

Dr. W... (a vet) stated that the quality starts here program was "a gimmic" for the organic industry. In other words, the QSH program was for tracking all the products used on cattle. I thought government and the pharmaceutical companies had already confirmed these products were safe. What's the problem? Are we seeing synergistic interactions with unfavourable results?