The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;34;22
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room. Today, I really wanted to talk about a kind of a case study that happened here at our research center on some of our dairy calves and kind of go through our diagnosis. What we were trying to figure out, the diagnostic report that we got back from the Veterinary Diagnostic lab and what we can do about it, and and what happened.

00;00;34;28 - 00;01;05;06
Brad
So this is our spring calving season, and we're about done here at the end of May. But we started calving in end of March with a lot of dairy calves and dairy beef crosses as well. So we are trying to figure out what was going on with our calves. So about mid April, roughly the first calves were maybe three weeks old, a month old, and they started to get severe diarrhea.

00;01;05;08 - 00;01;31;02
Brad
They were actually on an automatic calf feeder, and I noticed that they weren't drinking as well as what they normally would. These calves were supposed to be drinking ten liters a day, and some of them were drinking 3 to 4. Some maybe two liters. So the amount consumed by these calves was significantly less. So they were depressed. They were just laying around.

00;01;31;05 - 00;02;11;22
Brad
Remember I also had cow manager sensors on these calves so we could look at the cow manager. Notice they weren't really eating or drinking. There was a lot of non-active behavior happening so the calves really weren't feeling good. Depressed attitude laying around diarrhea scours and not drinking really. So it kind of compounded a little bit because we had dairy beef crosses and normally we would get rid of those about 7 to 10 days of age, roughly.

00;02;11;24 - 00;02;35;17
Brad
And they would go to some farmers that are raising them up. And then one farm called us and said, oh, these cows got scours. What's what's going on? Are you noticing anything in your herd? And then another farmer who had got a few calves also noticed that they were scouring three weeks of age, roughly. Some were doing it a little bit sooner.

00;02;35;20 - 00;03;00;16
Brad
A couple of weeks of age. And so it was kind of perplexing because we hadn't seen any big issues. You know, we didn't have any calves die. They were just really depressed. Remember last year, if we go back probably a year ago or more, we had some calves that had Cork City Osis in our herd. It was one calf had died from Cork City.

00;03;00;21 - 00;03;29;17
Brad
So we kind of went through this Cork city oasis bout. So what's going on here? Well, we went and took some manure samples from a few calves that we had. We tested about four calves. Some of them were, a month of age. A couple of them were just a couple weeks of age. We sent them off to the University of Minnesota vet diagnostic lab to see what was there.

00;03;29;19 - 00;03;57;27
Brad
I had my suspicions about what was going on with these calves, just because I had kind of seen it before. And, we'll we'll talk about that. So we got the results back from these calves and hear all the negative things. So there was no significant growth for an aerobic culture. No salmonella was real cultured or isolated.

00;03;57;29 - 00;04;31;26
Brad
Upon fecal examination, there was no parasitic ova, no oocytes, no Cryptosporidium. No Giardia. So no parasites were observed in, in any of the feces. So that's good. No, no crypto it. Some people were some of the workers were worried that it could have been cryptosporidium in these calves. But we didn't find any of that. Bovine coronavirus was negative for all of these.

00;04;31;29 - 00;05;05;06
Brad
So which one is left. Well, rotavirus rotavirus group A is what these calves had. Like I said, I had had my suspicions before because we have seen rotavirus in in this herd. Basically we we see it again. Now let's talk about some of the value. So you get a cycle threshold value in these calves. All four of them were positive for rotavirus one had a 33 CT value.

00;05;05;06 - 00;05;36;29
Brad
The other one had a 33, the other one had a 17, and the last calf had a 26 CT value. So basically CT values that are below 35 or 40 indicates a positive infection. So we've isolated rotavirus from these calves. Now some of the other calves at least these calves lower values are considered to be high viral loads.

00;05;37;02 - 00;06;12;23
Brad
So there was one calf Holstein calf. She was four weeks old so a month old. And she had the lowest value of 17. So a huge viral load in that calf. So let's talk about what did we do with these calves. And then we'll talk a little bit how to maybe prevent rotavirus. So first off rotavirus A is a major cause of diarrhea in calves in in young animals it's probably the most prevalent.

00;06;12;26 - 00;06;46;00
Brad
We see it in humans. If you have young kids, rotavirus is the predominant virus that is causing diarrhea and dehydration in young infants. So we see this in calves as well. Some of the symptoms are watery yellow feces dehydrated and decreased suckling that were that is all that we saw as well. Scours looking dehydrated and not wanting to eat.

00;06;46;03 - 00;07;27;18
Brad
So let's talk about some calf scours and some causes and how we could have done things maybe differently with these animals. So if you think about calf scours, 95% of the infections are caused by either rotavirus, coronavirus or cryptosporidium. So we only had rotavirus and it's actually dehydration that is actually going to kill these calves. If you have, electrolytes and are feeding these calves, that's probably the most crucial part of any treatment protocol is to get electrolytes in these calves.

00;07;27;25 - 00;07;54;15
Brad
You want to provide nutritional help to these animals. So we have to provide nutrition to them. So not just feeding water and electrolytes. They also need milk while they're going through this rotavirus bout. Basically we should try to continue to get in at least two gallons of milk. Either buy whole milk or milk replacer for these calves every day.

00;07;54;17 - 00;08;22;23
Brad
They're probably not going to drink at all because obviously they're depressed, so they're going to have reduced suckling. But we should at least try to offer that as well as electrolytes. So basically scours causes dehydration in calves and is probably the leading cause of death in calves under one month of age. So we noticed all these were basically one month of age calves that were causing these problems.

00;08;22;25 - 00;08;56;20
Brad
And I should say that this these calves were on an automatic calf feeder. So there was 15 of them in a group, and we pretty much saw it in every single calf, not necessarily the scours. We didn't really see scours in every calf, but we saw depressed attitudes and reduced drinking speeds and reduced milk consumption. So just because they didn't have scours or a clinical case of scours didn't mean that they had some sort of rotavirus infection going on within them.

00;08;56;22 - 00;09;29;20
Brad
So rotavirus, it basically infects cells which help with absorption of nutrients in the small intestine. So the lack of small intestine nutrient absorption causes nutritional deficiencies for the calf and interferes with the rest of the digestive tract. Ability to absorb water. So this result is diarrhea. Basically, it's a complication to the calf not getting nutrients, which we see so major diarrhea.

00;09;29;22 - 00;09;53;17
Brad
So basically we diagnose this because we saw those calves with scours. I was pretty adamant that we needed to do some fecal testing. And when we talked to these farmers as well, that cut some of our dairy beef calves were like, can you do a fecal test? Send it into the lab so we can tell what it is?

00;09;53;19 - 00;10;20;04
Brad
Because more than likely it could be coming from our farm. We're not sure, but we wanted to test that, to see what it was. So we send in a test. And I would recommend if you have scour issues, especially in a lot of calves like we did, probably sending it in to see what was in those manure samples could tell us, because if we didn't know, it could have been coronavirus, it could have been cryptosporidium.

00;10;20;06 - 00;10;48;29
Brad
And but we found rotavirus and nothing else. So it was a good thing that we were able to send those samples in to really figure out what was going on in those calves. So how do we treat these calves with scours? Basically, we supplemented them with electrolytes, and that was probably the most crucial thing. There really isn't much you can do with a rotavirus infection.

00;10;48;29 - 00;11;18;09
Brad
It's a virus. It's got to move through the animals as long as you keep them hydrated, you should not have any death loss. That's what we did. Sometimes you might have to tube the electrolytes because they're not going to drink it. But the important thing is to get fluids into those calves multiple times a day so you can keep them going and get them through this rotavirus infection.

00;11;18;12 - 00;11;48;20
Brad
So basically, if you're bottle feeding, you should not stop feeding the calf milk. Remember always feed the calf milk. It needs nutrition and the nutritional value of milk to help fight this disease. And you can mix electrolytes eating that. So you can either mixed electrolytes in with the milk, or you can feed electrolytes with water and give them as a supplement.

00;11;48;23 - 00;12;13;12
Brad
So that is the number one way to fight rotavirus and fight this disease is electrolytes. There's also some things, you know, scours is extremely uncomfortable for calves. It can be very painful for calves. So there might be some anti-inflammatory options that you could use. Obviously by providing some pain relief helps these calves get back on their feet a lot faster.

00;12;13;15 - 00;13;01;16
Brad
So really should work with your veterinarian to figure that out. We would use band. I mean, because some of some of these calves were organic, we can use band amine or flu Nixon in that. So band amine might help reduce that inflammation in these calves. So the question is what about antibiotics. Basically 95% of scours in calves are not caused by a bacteria, which that means 95% of the cases antibiotics will not treat the cause of the disease obviously, scours can result in secondary bacterial infections, but just because a calf has scours doesn't mean that antibiotics are going to fix it.

00;13;01;19 - 00;13;30;05
Brad
So usually you maybe reserve antibiotic picks for animals that have really high temperatures above 102 and a half degrees or really low. Obviously, you want to consult with your veterinarian to figure out if you should use antibiotics for secondary infections. But these cases of scours antibiotics are not going to work with our cases of rotavirus. No antibiotics would have fix that problem.

00;13;30;05 - 00;13;55;27
Brad
We were only going to be able to fix it with electrolytes and keeping the calves hydrated. So how are the calves doing now? Well, they're doing quite well. We did not lose any calves about it maybe took a week or ten days for the rotavirus symptoms to resolve in these calves, for the drinking speeds, for the consumption of milk to pick up again.

00;13;56;03 - 00;14;21;06
Brad
But eventually they started drinking again and everybody is doing fine. We didn't have any rotavirus and other calves that we had coming in later. We kind of isolated them and made sure that they were not near the sick calves. But the cases resolved in the calves are doing fine and drinking milk now. I think if I look at them now, some of them are getting close to weaning.

00;14;21;09 - 00;14;39;18
Brad
They're consuming well up to their ten liters of milk per day, so they've all kind of rebounded. I admit it was kind of depressing at some. Sometimes going into the calf barn and seeing all these calves, some with with scours, some with depressed attitudes, look on the auto feeder. And it's like, Holy smokes, none of these calves are drinking any milk.

00;14;39;18 - 00;14;58;08
Brad
What is going on? But once we figured it out, we were able to treat. Now, it took a little bit to get these fecal results back and we didn't wait. We did not wait for the fecal results to come back. Before we started treatment. We were feeding electrolytes right away that we noticed a lot of these calves were depressed.

00;14;58;08 - 00;15;22;12
Brad
So that is probably the key thing to do is get electrolytes into these calves and not necessarily weight, because sometimes it can take a week to get the test results back. Well, you don't have a week to wait. You have to get adequate nutrition back into these calves to help so they can fight off this disease. How do we prevent these calf scours?

00;15;22;14 - 00;15;54;16
Brad
Well, if I go back to my results and look at the CT values, I've asked some veterinarians what kind of those values mean and some of them with the low CT values. Those are high viral loads, like they have a big dose eroded virus in them, huge virus loads. I can tell you where it comes from if you want to guess its cleanliness.

00;15;54;19 - 00;16;30;04
Brad
I think we talked about cleanliness on many episodes, dealing with disease, either calf scours or other cow issues. The biggest one is cleanliness. I don't know if I can reiterate that or tell you more about cleanliness. It is clean, clean and clean. Basically, we need to make sure that our calving pens are clean everywhere. Anything that the calf comes into contact with needs to be clean.

00;16;30;06 - 00;17;03;00
Brad
The more viral load that these calves get, the more likelihood of disease. So we looked at our calf housing. How can we change some things where we can do more cleanliness in our auto feeder? We can wash our calf pens or our small maternity pens where our calves in a few days wash them after every calf. I know that is difficult to say and do, and it's hard for some people to understand that, but sometimes we may have to clean an individual calf, even if they're only in there for two days.

00;17;03;03 - 00;17;27;18
Brad
I think you need to clean it, clean it after that calf is out of there because you just don't know what they could have spread. And then you put another newborn in there and all of a sudden rotavirus could be spreading to that calf as well. So clean and disinfect individual calf housing between each use. Obviously clean and disinfect the group housing between the groups.

00;17;27;21 - 00;18;03;24
Brad
We try to do that. For the most part. We do it with these calves. Came into a clean barn. Obviously we want to keep the feeding equipment should be cleaned and disinfected. We can always do a better job of that. It's always sometimes it's difficult in an auto feeder, to keep things just constantly cleaning. But, it can be very helpful to keep things clean, have disinfectants, disinfect a lot of things that the calves are in contact with, make sure the workers are disinfecting their boots or their shoes.

00;18;03;24 - 00;18;26;27
Brad
If they're coming into that barn wearing gloves when they're handling these calves. Those are all things that are important. Do we do those things here? Not always, not always, but we're trying to do a better job at that, especially now that we have this diagnosis back that says, oh, we got rotavirus. So we need to do a better job of doing that ourselves.

00;18;26;29 - 00;18;57;24
Brad
Obviously, you also need to think about the cow, for she has this calf. Obviously, vaccinating this cow at the correct time when she's pregnant can help improve the quality of colostrum and maybe target specific scours causing pathogens. Our cows were vaccinated. They were vaccinated with a vaccine that helps or should help in rotavirus outbreaks. Did it? Maybe. Maybe not.

00;18;57;26 - 00;19;24;23
Brad
Maybe some of the calves that didn't have huge clinical signs it was helping prevent a large outbreak. Some of the calves that showed high CT values or low CT values. They probably had such a high viral load that the vaccine wasn't going to work. So I think that's an important part helping vaccination or vaccinating those cows. But then cleanliness is always the major component.

00;19;25;00 - 00;19;54;10
Brad
A vaccine is not going to cure your ailments. It's not going to save you. It might help prevent some of those calves from getting real sick. But cleanliness is probably the main factor. Calving pens, calf pens, you name it. Obviously nutrition. You have to have good nutrition. Remember, keep feeding those calves milk, not just electrolytes. Probably the other big thing is be consistent.

00;19;54;12 - 00;20;22;19
Brad
Be consistent in our protocols in feeding. You know we're pasteurized. The milk we're getting it fed to those calves. Consistency is key as well to helping prevent calves from getting scours. But the last thing is cleaning and sanitizing. And I'm going to end with that. That's probably the main thing. And we need to do a better job of it on our dairy.

00;20;22;21 - 00;20;45;10
Brad
And I would almost bet that a lot of other people need to do a much better job at cleaning as well. But to prevent calf scours, you want to use a system wide approach that includes cow health, colostrum management, calf nutrition, cleaning and sanitizing, and vaccinate issues. So it's not a one size fits all that's going to cure our rotavirus issues.

00;20;45;10 - 00;21;09;15
Brad
We need to think about it from a whole systems perspective and look at everything. So with that, I hope you learned something today about calf scours and a little bit of case studies on on our calves. And you know, we're not perfect here either. So we we get disease in our calves. So hopefully you learned a few things and are able to take some of those things to help improve your calf herd as well.

00;21;09;17 - 00;21;33;29
Brad
So with that, I think we'll end today. If you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the newsroom. That's E Moss r o m at Umkc edu, or find us on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension for Rock dairy by.