The Moos Room™

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Dr. Joe Armstrong: Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. This is the University of Minnesota Extension's The Moos Room. Just a couple of things to clarify before we get into what's going on today in the episode. We covered this in the episode, but I wanted to say it again. We're talking about coronavirus in this episode as it applies to scours in calves. That coronavirus that we're talking about is bovine coronavirus. Not any threat to humans, not able to jump back and forth, so just wanted to make that clear.
The other thing we didn't mention in this episode and we should have is that if you have a calf that's down, unable to stand up, really, you need to be looking at IV fluid therapy, intravenous fluid therapy to get that calf back on its feet. If you're able to do that, great. If you're not, that's where you need to call your vet, ask for some help because that's really the best thing for that calf. With that, thank you for listening. Let's jump into the episode.
Welcome to The Moos Room. We're talking today about calf scours in general. We're just going to do a general episode first, and we'll talk about beef, and then our dairy, and then beef specifically in the following episodes. I think the first place to start, we're not going to waste any time, first place to start is, what actually causes calf scours. When we're looking at what is actually tested for and what actually causes calf scours, there's three things that cause 95% of the cases, and that's crypto, rota, and coronavirus. Cryptosporidium is a parasite, rotavirus is a virus, coronavirus is a virus.
I guess we should address right away that we're saying coronavirus. Coronavirus, it's a virus that affects almost every species. It's definitely a problem in cattle. As far as we know, and definitely listening to the CDC on their guidelines as well, there is no cross-contamination between our domestic animals and humans. This coronavirus is specific to cattle and is not a danger to humans, the one that we're talking about today. When I say coronavirus, we're talking about the cow-specific coronavirus.
Emily: This coronavirus, that's just a general term for the family of viruses, I guess, I would say.
Joe: Perfect. Yes, that's exactly it. It's not something we have to worry about. Now, the other things, maybe we should backtrack a little bit and just give a definition of scours in case someone's listening that isn't on a dairy or on a beef operation. Scour is basically calf diarrhea. It can be hard to tell sometimes if it really is diarrhea. Anybody who's got kids out there, if they're only taking in liquid, there's pretty much only liquid coming out the back. Just having loose feces is not the definition of scours.
Bradley: That's a good point. How do we tell between scours from the disease versus nutritional scours? Because I think sometimes people go into a calf pen and they see a bunch of loose manure, and they automatically jump to scours when it could be maybe those calves are on an automatic calf feeder being fed ad libitum and they're drinking 15 liters of milk. They got nutritional scours.
Joe: Exactly. That's a huge different thing. I don't know. Everyone talks about it interchangeably. To me, I really draw a pretty hard line on what I define as scours. Scours to me is the disease that actually has an effect. When you say nutritional scours, to me, that means something's wrong. For me, there could be loose feces that's not scours, which is just a product of drinking a lot of milk.
Nutritional scours to me is actually a true disease but it's actually caused most of the time by us. It has to do with osmotic pull into the gut. If we're mixing something that's too concentrated, whether that's milk replacer or for whatever reason, their total solids are super high, or we can even do it with electrolytes, which we'll talk about later when we talk about treatment. Electrolytes, if we mix those too concentrated, our osmolality is really big. It's a big pull and it's higher than--
Bradley: That's a big word too.
Joe: Yes, sorry. Basically, there's too many particles compared to outside the gut and it draws water into the gut.
Emily: All right. Dr. Armstrong, what kind of scours are we talking about today then? What's causing it? Is this environmental scours you would call it or what would you say this is?
Joe: I think we can talk about both, but I really do draw pretty-- They're in two different camps. We have infectious scours and then we have nutritional scours. Nutritional scours being usually caused by us. It's total solids or particles, the osmolality is too high. Then infectious scours when we're talking about crypto, rota, and corona, and then the other few bugs that cause it, other than those three. I think there's two different camps, but the big thing is to recognize that scours is a disease process.
It doesn't just mean loose feces but it means that feces is really loose when you can actually use a manure grading scale or manure scoring chart. Usually, I think about it as if it's so loose that it falls through the straw, doesn't sit on top, then I start to think it's scours. Then you have to look at the calf to figure the rest out. Brad, I'm sure you've seen scours plenty on the dairy. What do those calves usually look like?
Bradley: Yes. That's the big thing that I think we can't forget it is to look at the calves. They look sunken in, their eyes are sunk in. You can tell that their gut is sunk in. Sometimes if they get really bad, you can start to see their ribs. They might not even get up in the pen. You could go into a pen of calves or a hutch of a calves or out on pasture and they're just laying there, and they have no vigor in them. I think you can tell something is wrong right away. Mostly, it's probably from dehydration, I would guess is probably the main culprit.
Joe: Absolutely. Yes, they look pretty depressed when they have scours, and so like Brad said, it's always good to go back to the calf to really get a feel for what's going on if there really is a problem that needs to be addressed and dehydration is our biggest enemy. Timeline on these calves getting scours, when we look at it, it's pretty defined, that first three weeks is key. If they're getting sick in that first three weeks, that's your peak time for scours.
There's a pretty definitive timeline on what they can and can't have based on when they get sick, based on incubation times, and things like that. Big thing to know right away is if they're under three weeks old, it's impossible for them to have coccidia. Coccidia, their lifecycle, it's three weeks. If that calf was exposed day zero, the first day it was alive, it will then maybe have coccidia day 21. If it's in that first three weeks, it's impossible for them to have coccidia, so we're back to our big three, rota, corona, and crypto.
Bradley: The question is if calves are getting it in the first three weeks of life, where is it coming from?
Joe: It's usually environmental. We talk about environment playing a huge piece of this. Everything that we know about these different bugs when it comes to scours is dose-dependent. The more bugs they get, the more likely they are to get sick. The more bugs they get when they do get sick, the sicker they get. It's all about controlling how many of those bugs they see and that's all about controlling the environment.
That goes all the way back to the calving pen, they can get exposed as soon as they hit the ground. That's usually we're talking about all the environment, anything they can touch, suck on, you know [unintelligible 00:08:34] calves, they chew on everything, so you got to be really careful about cleaning and doing all that, but it's coming from everywhere.
Emily: What about E. coli? I feel like I hear that out in the field a lot that people, this, that and the other thing, scours included, it's caused by E. coli. Is that really true? Do we see a lot of E. coli-caused scours?
Joe: For the most part, no. E. coli, when we're looking at actual scours cases and causative agents, we're looking at less than 2% of the cases being caused by E. coli. E. coli is a normal bug in the GI tract. I can grow E. coli if I really try from any fecal sample, probably from almost any species. You can grow it.
Emily: Can you grow some from Brad?
Joe: I think we'll--
Bradley: Probably.
Joe: We probably could. We could.
Emily: Let's not and say we did though.
Joe: Okay, yes. We probably shouldn't go down this road. Just take a quick pause so I know where to cut.
Emily: [chuckles] Sorry.
Joe: Yes, E. coli, not an issue. I don't even address it when I'm talking about scours usually because it covers such a small range of the cases.
Bradley: That's an interesting question because we've done some testing at our university dairy, and E. coli showing up in calves. Then we use Bovine Ecolizer for vaccinating calves when they get younger. You roll your eyes at me so tell me about it. Should people do that? There's a lot of people that do that. I don't know, I don't know.
Joe: We're getting into this vaccine question and I've already had--
Bradley: We don't have to go there now.
Joe: No, I think we should, we should. It's one of the main takeaways from this talk that I gave about scours. I think that vaccines are a tool that we can use to some effect but for the most part, I look at vaccines, especially vaccines given at birth, as a way to put a bandaid on a management issue until you fix that management issue. That's how I'm looking at vaccines because I think if you do a good enough job with colostrum you can avoid all of that.
For the most part, if you do a really good job with your colostrum and you stay really clean with your environment, I don't think you need to vaccinate calves at birth with anything. We'll make sure everyone knows that's my opinion. That's my view on it, I don't know how you feel about it, Brad.
Bradley: I think you make a good point. I totally agree with colostrum is the key, cleanliness is a big thing too. That's probably my number one is cleanliness. Even when calves are born, that's probably where they're getting it from in the beginning is a dirty environment. It's hard to tell on vaccines, you know what? We use them in our university dairy, we had some train wrecks in the past so we started vaccinating and knock on wood. I don't want to take them away just because we have tested our calves, we do find rota and corona but sometimes some calves get it and it's like, well, they were vaccinated so why are they getting it?
Joe: I think that's an important point as we talk about vaccines for sure, they�re insurance, that's what they are. Vaccines are added insurance, they�re a risk management tool for the most part and they can be completely overwhelmed. They're not bulletproof. If you give that calf enough bugs or enough pathogens, enough particles of whatever disease-causing agent, you can override that vaccine easy. Then there's-- [crosstalk]
Emily: Vaccines are not a "I'm going to do this so I don't have to do other management." They're not a replacement for management.
Joe: Exactly.
Emily: You need them, they're just another tool in your toolbox. They accompany good management. I left my soapbox in my car but I'm going to pretend I have it with me right now and just reiterate again the importance of this cleanliness issue because we see this not only in calves. You should sense the general theme that this is for every area, every stage of life for your animals. You need to make sure you're keeping them clean. We see it on the calf side to prevent that rota, the corona, those other things from being present.
Then we see it just as heifers because bred heifers they can calving for the first time with mastitis if they're in a dirty enough environment. We're looking at those things and then of course with cows and mastitis and all of these things. What do we always say? Clean and dry, clean and dry. I tell people it's simple, it's dumb, it's kind of a no-brainer but if you're not sure how clean their environment is or if you need to put more bedding down, do the kneel test. Go down into the bedding, kneel down, if you stand up and your knees are wet you need a fresh bed.
Just wanted to reiterate that again because I think we brush off keeping things clean, especially if we are using some of these other tools. Again, these tools are not replacements for just baseline proper management.
Bradley: I agree. Cleanliness of feeding utensils and everything with calves. You can go on a lot of farms and dirty equipment is maybe number one for causing scours in calves. I think it really is. That's probably what's helped prevent scours in a lot of our calves is just clean utensils every time.
Joe: I think that's key and I'm really glad that Emily got on her soapbox. It's nice to have someone else do it. It doesn't make me feel so self-conscious about jumping up on mine all the time so that's good. That�s good.
Emily: I got you, Joe, don't worry.
Joe: Thank you. Thank you. When I rank all the things that have to do with preventing scours, colostrum is number one. I think number one and two are always tied together in my mind because colostrum is always number one, how much do they get and how good is that colostrum? Then also the animal that's producing that colostrum. Mom, so mom is huge. The dam health and nutrition is always next on the list when we're looking at how to prevent scours. Colostrum is always number one.
It's the biggest predictor of lifetime performance, beef or dairy, whether or not that animal got good quality colostrum and got enough of it. Then number two is always dam health and nutrition. Keeping that animal at the right body condition year round with no drop after calving, no roller coaster ride of that body conditioning going up and down, and keeping that nutritional plan right for the correct stage of gestation that that animal is in.
I think that's always number two and then we're right on top of what you guys are talking about clean, pathogen exposure, and like we talked about already, dose-dependent. Trying to figure out how to limit, how many bugs those calves see in any way possible is huge.
Bradley: What about colostrum? How do we know that colostrum is good from cows? It's different for beef and dairy in how you can measure that. For dairy, we can use refractometers, colostrometers to tell whether the colostrum is any good or not but should farmers be doing that? We do it at our dairy just so we know that the colostrum is good.
Joe: I would say on the beef side it's a little different like you said. I don't know of any beef farmers that are testing colostrum quality, and I don't think it would go very well. I think there'd be a lot of people very hurt trying to get it done.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: I think it's something that we don't do on that side but you can usually figure out how to select for that based on calf growth and all those other things. If you're looking at who's giving you a good calf, chances are they gave that calf good colostrum. On the beef side, I don't know if we're going to get into quality testing too much. On the dairy side, I do think it's a really good idea. With how inexpensive refractometers are and how much data we have to show where the cut-offs are for good and bad colostrum, I think it's almost a no-brainer to test everything to make sure that at least your heifers are getting the best quality colostrum that they can and so a refractometer is just easy.
I love the digital ones too. I don't know what you guys use but that's easy. You put a drop in, close the cover, hit the button, and spits out a number.
Bradley: We do use a digital one. It's a MISCO Refractometer is what we use. I think I've seen a lot of those on other dairy farms too. They�re maybe $400 or $500 there but it's well worth the investment. You can also look at blood serum in those to see if a calf has failed passive transfer or not.
Joe: Yes. I think we'll probably save those topics when we're talking about dairy specifically next week just because the beef guys are probably tuned out right now already but we--
Emily: Come back, beef guys.
Joe: I think we should probably save those and testing individual quality on a beef operation would be almost impossible. Almost impossible.
Bradley: How do we get good colostrum? You said cows, is there any other ways in a beef herd or how do you make sure that colostrum is adequate and that the calves are getting it?
Joe: Most of it is just about consumption in general because we usually, I'll say usually don't have giant udders and huge milk production numbers on the beef side. Things tend to be a little more concentrated so the quality tends to be better and that's pretty broad and vague. For the most part, it's just making sure that calf got up and drank and facilitating that however you need to.
Making sure you have a working facility or shoot to make sure that it is possible for you to do that. For the most part, we're talking about just making sure they drink something in an adequate time because time is huge. It should be in the first four hours if we can.
Bradley: What about treatment for scours? How do we go about treating them if we know we got it? There's so much we can do.
Joe: Yes. I think, well, I'm biased, I'm a vet so you should have a written protocol to follow based on certain parameters.
Bradley: How many farms have those?
Joe: Well, it depends with the new farm 4.0 you probably should have it, right?
Bradley: We would hope that you should have a protocol and if you don't, we'll help you develop one.
Joe: Exactly. Treatment is usually focused around rehydrating. Dehydration is the killer. It's big on electrolytes. Our treatments are usually electrolyte-focused and then pain-focused as well because scours hurts. If anybody out there's had crypto, it really hurts. It really, really hurts. I've had it, [crosstalk] had it.
Bradley: I've had it too.
Joe: Emily probably had it really young. She grew up in a dairy, so she probably doesn't remember. We start with rehydrating. The big thing that I keep telling people and I really don't know where it came from, you can't pull the milk. You can't take that milk away from that calf. The electrolytes are in addition at a separate feeding to the milk because they need those calories to fight off the infection. You can't starve their immune system of those calories and expect them to get better.
Don't pull the milk, electrolytes first. Pain management with usually meloxicam is the go-to drug right now. After that, antibiotics are not, to me, is all based on temperature. On a beef side, it might be a little hard.
Bradley: What about eggs? What about eggs? Could we put eggs down them?
Joe: About what?
Bradley: Eggs.
Joe: Eggs?
Bradley: You go to a lot of farms and they're using eggs to help control scours. Put a couple of eggs down them. I've seen that in many places.
Joe: Chicken eggs?
Bradley: Yes, like raw eggs. Put raw eggs down them. You've never heard of that?
Joe: No, I have not, never heard of that.
Emily: No.
Joe: Yes, it might be.
Bradley: You'd better look that one up.
Joe: I will look it up but I'm going to say with pretty good confidence I don't have any data behind that one.
Bradley: I don't either but I see a lot of people do it.
Emily: Brad, are your guys also giving them apple cider vinegar?
Bradley: Yes, that probably works too.
Joe: [chuckles]
Emily: I know that's the big thing.
Joe: It works for everything. It works for everything.
Emily: It'll solve all your problems.
Joe: Okay, eggs, I've never heard of that one. No. Electrolytes are key. I would say if you're given eggs but you're also giving electrolytes, the electrolytes [unintelligible 00:22:05] the calf. That's what happened.
Bradley: You're right, yes.
Joe: What we're looking for on electrolytes is that it needs to be mixed correctly. We talked about nutritional scours before, and if you mix it too concentrated, you'll actually make the whole problem worse. Make sure you follow the directions on the package, and if you're in any doubt, mix them a little more dilute. Then I use electrolytes. Sometimes you only have to give them once in between the two milk feedings if you feed twice a day.
At other times, I've given them three, four, or five times a day just trying to get a calf back on its feet. Then antibiotics, I add antibiotics if they're hot or they're cold. If they're above 103 or if they're below 99.5 or below 100, that's when I start giving antibiotics. Otherwise, as we know, it's not caused by a bacteria most of the time, so those antibiotics really aren't doing anything to treat scours.
Bradley: What are the big takeaways? What do we do to control scours if we know we have it?
Joe: Big takeaways are colostrum should go to the top of your list for where you spend time and money. That's my big argument against vaccines is that if you have time and money to spend, it should be spent on making your colostrum program perfect. That's number one. That's the big takeaway.
Number two is making sure that body condition and nutrition for your cows is as optimized as it can be. That's involving your nutritionist that's actually recording body conditions because you can't know what they're doing if you're not looking at them. Then number three would be keep everything clean and dry. Clean and dry. Clean and dry. Clean and dry.
Emily: Co-signed.
Joe: Yes.
Emily: I will get out my soapbox again if I need to.
Joe: No, don't do it. You can do it as much as you want because I'll get on mine plenty.
Emily: We can just set them up next to each other, bring each other lunch.
Joe: Absolutely.
Bradley: I'll be on the other side talking all the virtues of vaccines.
Emily: Yes, and giving your calves raw eggs.
Joe: Raw eggs, apparently.
Bradley: It's true. I just looked it up. There's lots of research studies about giving raw eggs and its protein. You should not just give them raw eggs, don't get me wrong. You should still keep them hydrated with milk and electrolytes, but egg protein helps coagulate them.
Joe: If there's research behind it, I'll look into it. I think Brad and I are probably going to be reading some papers on it because now I'm interested.
Emily: When is that research dated, Bradley?
Bradley: It's been going on for many years, many years. There's been some interesting studies on it just recently, within the last 10 years or so that looked at dairy calves and using egg proteins basically.
Joe: There's one more thing that we should talk about and we should have talked about it already. We'll talk about it more as we get into the dairy-specific stuff and the beef-specific stuff, but it's giving that calf needs enough nutrition too. If it's not being fed enough, if it's run down, if it doesn't have any body fat reserves to pull on, and its immune system doesn't develop correctly because we're not feeding enough, then that can just open the door for scours to come in because we're immunosuppressed basically.
We'll talk more in the next episode when we talk about dairy stuff, specifically how much to feed, and maybe Brad and I can argue about that too but yes.
Bradley: We will.
Joe: Yes, I'm sure we will. That's fine.
Bradley: It makes it interesting.
Emily: I'll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs, it'll be fine.
Joe: No, no, you got to get in on the argument too.
Bradley: Oh, I think we both agree for the most part.
Joe: Absolutely.
Bradley: Don't get me wrong.
Emily: It's fun when you don't agree too.
Joe: Oh, yes, that's very fun. I really like when I don't agree with other people, it makes it a lot more entertaining. One other thing that does apply to both beef and dairy is just added calf stress and how that affects the immune system, and again, opens the door for scours and all those pathogens to set up shop. Handling is huge. We can talk about that. That's probably a big soapbox issue of mine that I'll stay off of for now.
Handling is big, low-stress handling, ventilation, overcrowding, hot, cold, all those things add extra stress to that calf. That just is one more thing that brings that immune system down and can make scours an issue on your farm. How did we do? Did we cover most of it, guys, in general as far as what scours in general?
Bradley: Yes, I think so.
Emily: Oh, we crushed it.
Joe: Crushed it. Good.
Emily: Knocked it out of the park.
Joe: Colostrum first.
Bradley: Cleanliness.
Joe: Cleanliness. Dam health and nutrition. If you get those three things right, then you can pretty much prevent the majority of scours on any operation, dairy, beef, it doesn't matter. All right, let's call that a wrap on this episode. That was general scours. Hopefully, you guys had fun with our discussion. We'll be back next episode to talk just about scours in the context of the dairy situation.
Join us next episode as we talk about dairy scours, causes, prevention, treatment, all those things, and specifically how it works on the dairy. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Catch you later.
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Bradley: Outtake.
Emily: Am I even on the actual podcast ever?
Bradley: No, you're not, You're off.
Joe: No, I just pull you. I've got it synced so it's actually recording your audio separate from Brad and I, and then we'll just cut your whole line out.
Emily: Perfect. Thank you.
Joe: You're welcome.
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