BSE Questions?

[cowman]

I imagine everyones basically heard about the theory about the copper/magnesium thing causing mad cow? What do you think of that theory?
There was an article in the last issue of the Canadian Cattleman that addressed this issue. It seems more scientists are having a serious look at this theory.
Why I wonder if there isn't something to it is a little incident we had on the farm back in the mid 80's.
We had a pen of yearling heifers that we were A.I.ing. Had been on dry feed all winter and spring. One day one of the best started displaying symtoms of what I would say now was BSE. She'd start to shake then stagger and fall down. She only did it occasionally at first. Later she got quit agressive, even trying to bite!
We were trying to get the crop in so we let this go on for a week or so before finally getting the vet out. He concluded she had grass tetany...but she'd never been on green grass! He was baffled and took some blood samples! Sure enough they came back that she was loaded with magnesium! He gave her some itervenious calcium but she was pretty sad by this time. When she tried to get up she would get the shakes and fall back down. My old man always had a solution to every problem...in this case the 22 and a little feast for the coyotes! A couple of years later I had a detailed feed test done and found out our land was very deficient in copper.
Now I don't know if she had mad cow or not but she sure acted just like the film clips I've seen of this. And no, these heifers weren't getting any supplement other than salt and mineral,homegrown barley and hay.

[pandiana]

cowman, what little I can remember of my biochemistry and recent research on BSE, this theory is somewhat plausible in that the pathalogical prion is related to normal proteins that are found in the brain, spinal cord and lymphatic tissue. Apparently, a mutation or some other event, causes abnormal folding of this prion, which results in a change in its activity. I do not believe they know at this time what a normal prion does, so it would be difficult to determine the exact mode of action of the BSE prion. They do know, from histological examination of brain tissue post mortem, that spongy holes develope throughout the brain. This is somewhat analogous, I believe, to what happens in Alzheimers although different morphology. The reason that MG or CU might be involved is that the folding of proteins often entails the binding of minerals. Wrong ion, wrong fold, wrong protein.

[liberty]

My brother-in-law worked on an Alberta ranch some years ago and they had a cow come down with very similar symptoms. The vet was baffled as well and was unable to come up with any solution. The cow died in the end, and my brother-in-law did some extensive reading and came to the conclusion that the cow had a serious copper deficiency. What got him thinking about this was when I told him about Mark Purdey's theories.

[ALICIA]

lead poising will cause the same symptoms. My calf a few years back decided that it liked the hydraulic oil off the haybine. I had just read about lead poison and just the minute I seen the calf staggering around I know. I called the vet and he went right to the slaughter house and got the stomach contents from a fresh cow and pumped it into my calf after taking the contents from my calfs stomach out. This lead poison causes blindness, staggering, convolutions then death. In about 6 hrs my calf got a drink of milk from mom and lived with on side affects. The vet was amazed because most do not make it.

[oldboy]

Good to see you back on line. We used a pile of canola straw last year and it save our a......We used some as bedding, ran it through the bale shredder, worked great. Also, ran it through the bale shredder and mixed it in with our silage for protein and an extender. We had a nutritionist help us set up our rations, otherwise, don't think we would have made it otherwise. You wouldn't believe the protein in this stuff. We had neighbors who laughed at us when we asked if we could buy and bale their canola straw, so they just gave it to us, I guess they thought we'd lost it. That was in August and first part of Sept last year and by the time all the harvest was done in this area and several other areas, all canola straw was being baled and some fetched a pretty good price. I guess being "straw poor" last year helped us in more ways than one. Don't be afraid to try it.

[Bruce14]

Hey cowman. Good to hear from you again.

We used canola last year as well. Crop ins. adjusted it at .4 bu/acre but we got 2.5t acre of straw/feed from it. It was green and all second growth.

We thought it took 3 canola bales to do the same job of bedding as 2 wheat straw.

This year we have an average amount of cereal straw so will only use the 500 "just in case" canola bales we made this spring.