summer scours

[grassfarmer]

stw, I would say you are introducing your cows to the grass the best way possible - working them onto old grass in April. I don't see a need to put hay out for cows however lush the grass, the cows do well enough even if the grass is running through them pretty fast and you aren't "wasting" grass because it's all being returned to the pasture anyway. hay to balance out the lush new grass in the gut? I agree with you vaccination is merely treating the symptom instead of the cause. We have never done it and I don't intent to start - the less than 1% scour problem we have is always in cows that supply their calves with substandard colostrum, either quality or quantity. As such vaccinating all my cows would not help - it would add cost to the already healthy calves and not solve the minority giving us the trouble.

As Greybeard suggest the Nebraska Sandhills method of calving works well - we have adapted that to use in our banked grass calving situation over the last 3 years and it has been an excellent move. A bonus has been discovering how much easier it is to move uncalved cows out from the herd versus new born pairs.

The wobbly thing was something we noticed here when we calved cows earlier in the year - calves that were 100% one night would be so wobbly they could fall over the next morning. My vet tells me it is pure dehydration that causes this but I would argue again that it must also be the type of scour causing the dehydration. Classic scouring calves in my experience would get scoury then after a day or two they would start to get wobbly and then you could catch them to treat them. This wobbly effect must be caused by a much more virile and fast hitting bug in my opinion. I suggested that to my vet once and that it might be a good time to take a scour sample for testing. As usual he dismissed that saying it was only dehydration and electrolytes solve all scour problems.

[kato]

That's quite a vet you have there.

Many years ago we had a horrific scour outbreak that our vet responded to the same way. We were young, very poor, and only had 20 cows. The first eight calves born all died. Needless to say, we were going crazy! We even brought him a sample, and he didn't bother to send it to the lab. Finally we worked through the vet in the next town, and he arranged for us to take the next calf born straight to the lab to be euthanized and tested. (As I said, we were at our wits end!) It turned out the calves had viral scours. Starting with the next calf born, they got a dose of Calf-guard, which was a brand new product at the time, at birth, and it was like you switched off a light. The scours stopped right there and then.

From this we learned to get a test done if either a calf doesn't respond to treatment at the first sign of scours, or if we have more than the occasional case. We also learned that if we didn't like the service we were getting from a vet, we'd go elsewhere. It's much too expensive not to have the problem solved.

We also have vaccinated the cows for a lot of years now, because prevention beats treatment any day.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah, he's a real wise guy Kato, left vet school knowing it all and no new information will ever come to light to change his views.
Among the disagreements I have with him:
No scour bolus works - if you reckon they helped a calf recover he insists it would have recovered equally without it - he still sells the boluses though!
Systemic is best for pink eye, considers the common UK treatment of aureomycin powder puffed into the eye inappropriate as it may damage the eye surface. My experience is it's cheaper and way more effective. I have had lasting eye damage from systemic treatments that didn't work - never any with the powder.
Systemic is best for mastitis, considers my wish to use the old fashioned tubes into the teat a waste of time. My experience has proven the tubes more effective (it's a $12 treatment too versus $100 for a bottle of the systemic he advocates)
He can also tell me that preg checking using ultra-sound won't work and is less accurate than manual preg checking. I had 15 years experience of preg checking by ultra-sound, he has none. I consider it a vastly superior system.
I enjoy my little "debates" with him when I go to pick up these old fashioned drugs that he doesn't approve of but still sells!

The real learning experience for me has been that I don't really need a vet or their advice very often. By moving to a more holistic approach and setting up the conditions for cows to be healthy and more in tune with nature we encounter very, very few health problems. Our treatment rates for lameness, pinkeye, mastitis, calf scours or anything else are below 1% a year. Prevention really is better than cure. I still use the vet for things I can't do - he has calved one cow with a twisted uterus and confirmed one outside-in calf for me in three years and that is the extent of his involvement.