Old Time Scour recipe

[cowman]

Here it is:
1.5 liters water
2 tblsp. brown sugar
1 tblsp. table salt
1 raw egg
1 tblsp. Javex bleach!

Works everytime even on those hopeless ones!

[Cedar]

Cowman:

Thanks for the info. Where did this recipe come from? Sounds good, much cheaper than some of the alternatives. But....a couple of questions....do we "dump" this concoction down their throats all at once? How long does it take before we see a response? BLEACH!!...what are you????? ...nuts??? ;-) That sounds totally bizarre! Is that one of those ol' "if it don't kill 'em, it'll cure 'em" type of things? That part of the recipe just makes me a little nervous (in case you can't tell...ha ha!!) And....last, but not least, what kinda egg...store bought, range type, or from the chicken house???? Whoops...I ain't got no chicken house! ;-) Any idea what the brown sugar and salt and egg do? I assume this mixture would have to be all blended up in a blender or something........????

I've had two calves looking kinda "icky-feeling", I think from an oncoming scour, this year.....gave them a mouthful of DE, and voila!... in a few hours...all seemed to be fine (touch wood!)....go figure....eh!

[cowman]

A farmer who had a massive outbreak of BVD scours told me about this recipe. He was treating calves for days on end with expensive stuff and little success. They were dying like flies and his vet had calves on intravenous and all sorts of good expensive things. An old cowboy heard of his plight and told him this recipe. He figured what do I have to lose? He gave every sick calf the bleach treatment and the dieing was over! Now when he told me this I was sceptical, to say the least. And seeing how scours are very rare at my place I never thought much about it. Then one day I got one really bad case. I was doing the super boluses thing and the electrolytes but this calf just wasn't going to make it. When it got to the point where he was out flat and his eyes starting to sink in I figured what have I got to lose? Mixed it up and tubed him...figured he'd be dead by morning. Next morning he was up and sucking! Good as new within two days! One treatment only!
Just put water,sugar,salt egg and bleach in a jug and mix up with a spoon. Tube him and leave him. The sugar/salt are basically an electrolyte. The egg coats the stomach walls and encourages the bugs to attach to the egg. The bleach kills the bugs...that is how it was explained to me. It sure worked for me! When I ran it by my vet he acknowledged that he knew of a lot of guys who used this method with good success.

[kato]

A better sugar might be dextrose or corn syrup. That's what mothers used to use in baby formula in the old days. It's absorbed better.

I'm surprised the guy saved anything with BVD scours. Did those calves ever amount to anything? BVD has the tendency to come back and haunt you.

[bombay_43]

We survived BVD in the 80's. Had it two years in a row, and lost around 15 calves both years. Our vet did not believe me when I told him I figured we had BVD again. You're right on with it coming back to haunt us Kato!

We ended up using any and every recipe anyone gave us! The one that worked for us, is as follows:

1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
1 and a half liters warm water
1 package of certo

mix and feed right in the stomach tuber

One treatment usually does the trick, and we found the no name brand pectin works equally well.

This stuff "jams" em up! lol I guess we do what ever works!

I can understand how the tablespoon of bleach would kill the bacteria that are present. Same as getting rid of bacteria in a swimming pool or town drinking water!

[cowman]

You know that farmer never mentioned how they did afterwards. Just the way he talked I assumed his problems were over. All I know is the bleach thing sure works and it doesn't cost anything.
I kind of get a kick out of how when a vet doesn't have a clue about something he relies on that old pat answer "Oh it must be BVD"! I was occasionally getting a couple of calves with stomach ulcers, usually in April/May. Anyway I took one dead one down for an autopsy(I knew an ulcer killed him) and the vet cuts him open and says yep its an ulcer. So I said yea I knew that but what caused it...answer "Oh its probably BVD" So I said now how can this be? I've vaccinated for over 15 years and never had BVD? Well he didn't know and babbled about sometimes the vaccine doesn't work, poor vaccinating procedures and other silly things.
Well I finally figured out that the problem was calves eating dry spear grass heads on native pasture. Never put them out on that pasture in the spring again and voila no more stomach ulcers!...but it was probably BVD!!!

[GrnAsMoss]

Thanks for the recipe. Hind sight is 20/20, regarding your spear grass ulcers in calves. I'm not a fan of veterinarians and bet he wanted to do a culture on those ulcers and charge you more $.

If you have any more old time recipes for various bovine ailments, I'd be interested in them. This year many producers will be avoiding vet bills.

Last week at the local butcher's shop the guy ahead of me had a calving heifer butchered with baby's back legs sticking out of her, (go figure). This BSE has made many producers doing strange things.

[farmboy1]

here's another one for scours- very similar to above.
10 grams salt
25 grams baking soda
3 Tblsp corn syrup
2 litres warm water.
Leave the calf on it's mother and give it this by tube every 12 hours. Once the nose warms up, the calf is on it's way. Just finished with this and saved another calf. It costs practically nothing (commercial electrolytes can run $7/day) and works A1. Another thing that never hurts is to give the calf 60 ml of Kaopectate twice a day to coat the bowel during scours.