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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Processing, always something that needs to be done but may not always be looked forward to. In this case, there were 25 cows and their calves getting ready for pre weaning vaccinations. After the cows and the calves all went through and were vaccinated. Twelve hours later, 12 cows and two calves were found dead. What happened? We'll find out today on Talks Talk. This is Bovine Science with BCI. I'm Brad White, joined by Dr. Scott Fritz. Good morning, Scott.
- [00:40]
B
Morning Brad.
- [00:41]
A
How are you this morning?
- [00:42]
B
Good, how are you?
- [00:43]
A
Good. I think this is an interesting case because we hear about these sometimes and it's the immediate post processing that rings a lot of alarm bells relative to what might have happened. What would work that quickly in these animals. And I think we have to start with maybe giving a little bit more detailed history of what was actually happening because this was early fall pre weaning shots, spring calves, you get calves that are six months old or so on adult cows. And everybody went through the chute and was processed, correct?
- [01:17]
B
Yep. So I guess I'll, this is, I'll give you the month. This was in August, not quite there yet, but it's certainly, you know, summer time frame in this particular place. It's not a, not a large pasture. It's kind of a small transition pasture that they sometimes use when they need it. These particular animals, I guess in this case there's an old barn on the place with a small like dry lot type scenario that they can use that way if they need it. So for these animals to get through that chute, they had to be brought up close, caught in a pen and then the shoot's in the barn. So they go through the barn and then exit the barn back to the pasture. So not that bad of a setup. And as far as what the animals were getting, the cows were just getting poured external parasite control at this time, the calves were getting pre weaning shots. So they got a five way viral vaccine, they got their seven way clostridial vaccine. They might have got poured themselves too, but just you know, doing that. So this, this particular herd, they give shots at turnout back in like June and then the second round in August and they'll wean them again here, you know, a month or so after this.
- [02:22]
A
Okay, so because a couple questions about the, what was actually done so on the, on the cows, they didn't receive any vaccines? Nope, just a pour. And when you say a pour on, was this a topical, just an insecticide or an insecticide and a dewormer.
- [02:38]
B
I don't remember the specific products, but yeah, one of the two.
- [02:41]
A
Okay. And then that, that's one of the things that, that I'm keen on because pretty darn unusual for that many cows to die within 12 hours of processing. One of the things that pops into my head is anaphylactic reaction or some sort of contamination in an injectable product. But with a pour on only, the only thing I can think of is do, do I have an incorrect dose, do I have something going on? Is how often do you see things like an organophosphate or a pyrethroid? And would that happen this quickly if I had an extreme overdose? Or can I even overdose those enough?
- [03:20]
B
You probably could. I think you could overdose anything if you tried hard enough, but I'd consider it really unlikely. And I would guess that this was an ivermectin based product. And I guess luckily the skin is pretty good at limiting absorption in a lot of ways, which is why you have to give quite a bit on account. You know, you think about that pour on dose to a cows, there's quite a bit of product that goes on there. But it would, I don't even know if you dip the entire body in there if like in an ivermectin type product, if that would be enough to do it, I doubt it. So we considered that pretty unlikely. And yeah, I always consider, you know, worry about the anaphylactic type things, especially with injectables. You know, you can have some, some weird vaccine things with handling that could do something like that. And then certain products you occasionally will run into those anaphylactic things. But the cows in this particular case were not getting a needle whatsoever.
- [04:10]
A
Okay. So I'm struggling to explain that one with the processing maybe I wouldn't think anything relative to stress or anything else that occurred with process, I can't think of anything else that would be associated with processing. If they've just got a topical insecticide or ivermectin based product that that would be any sort of reaction. So I'm struggling with that. But let's talk about the calves a minute because they did get a couple vaccines. They got a seven way clostridial vaccine, a five way. And was this a modified live viral vaccine?
- [04:44]
B
Yep.
- [04:45]
A
So five way modified live viral vaccine. So BVD type 1 and 2 IBR, pi3 BRSV. So that occasionally or the clostridial you could see some reactions, but it's actually relatively rare that you would see an anaphylactic reaction. And typically those occur pretty soon after the time of injection. So you mentioned in the case set up these were found dead 12 hours later. Did they observe them right after processing? Do you have any history of what happened immediately after or did they turn them out? You mentioned they go out of the barn and into another pasture and sometimes that means we don't take a look.
- [05:25]
B
Yeah, I would just know in the setup. I would guess they probably didn't take a look. So I copy you a picture of the place that they were on. That's a quarter section. So what that actually is is, you know, 40 acres on the one corner with maybe another five or six there with the yard. So it's not a great big place, but it's also August. So the row crop fields on either side are tall mature corn. Right. So you can't see into the pasture from the building very far. So my understanding went through the building, got their shots, went back to the pasture and that's probably it.
- [05:57]
A
Okay, so what else are you thinking on those calves as the, as they were found dead? Any other reactions or vaccine type problems that you would think about?
- [06:10]
B
I would think that those, like you said, a lot quicker. I mean, I'm thinking minutes for anaphylaxis, not hours and definitely not, you know, overnight. Who knows, it could have been one hour and they just, just didn't see them. Or it could have been in the middle of the night in this particular case. So they ran them through in the evening and then found them the next morning kind of thing.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah. And the thing that doesn't add up there to me is calves are the only ones that got the vaccines. They had 2 out of 25 affected. The cows did not get vaccines. They had 12 out of 25 affected. So I'm struggling a little bit with blaming it on the processing and I really can't think of. We'll see at times facility issues that will cause a specific type of lameness or a specific type of injury that can have a high prevalence following processing. But just, just don't. Death is a pretty extreme instance and you just don't see that.
- [07:00]
B
No, especially you know, 50% mortality in 12 hours on adult animals. That's. I don't know of anything infectious that'll do that, you know, and it's, I think it starts narrowing your list quite a bit.
- [07:11]
A
Yeah. So something, something's not adding up though because it may not be that, just that processing event. So were they able to do necropsies on these?
- [07:21]
B
Yeah, they did in, you know, there's Not a lot to be found on necropsy, I guess. And there were some other clues. So I don't. I don't know quite the best way to go through this without giving it away right up front. But some necropsies were performed. There wasn't a lot for gross lesions, so samples were collected. Just normal heart, lung, liver, kidney, rumen content and some brain out of a couple of these animals. And that was driven by some of the behavior they saw that we haven't really talked about yet.
- [07:49]
A
Yeah, so what was some of that behavior? So the veterinarian went to visit once this happened, went back to see what did they see in the animals.
- [07:58]
B
Yeah. So the veterinarian pulls up, drives into the pasture, and notices the multiple dead cows kind of sporadically placed throughout this 40 acres. Two calves were. Didn't really seem like there was any spatial clustering of any of that. But he did notice that all of the remaining animals in the pasture. So if you see on your satellite image, there's one single tree in the fence line in the back of that pasture, and every single one of the animals that were still in that pasture were huddled in the shade around there. And so as they got up close and got out to start looking at them, one of the cows actually tried to take the veterinarian. So pretty belligerent behavior. This is a fairly quiet set of cows, normally. And then the veterinarian noticed that at least the adult cows were very gaunted up, sucked up in the abdomen. And doing the Math, there were 12 deads, and there were only four adult cows standing in the shade. So they were missing some cows too. Nobody knows where they went.
- [08:49]
A
Okay, so now I'm starting to think, and I don't know if this is the direction you're leading me, but I'm wondering about neurologic issues. And the thing that pops into my mind is. Or with the rapid death sometimes, because these cattle went back to the same pasture that they had been in. However they stopped. And you said they got them up, they held them in the holding pens. I'm wondering about something in the holding pens that may have affected them or a week. Because a lot of times our holding pens, they have whatever grows up in them because we don't graze them, and then they get there. So I'm wondering about a toxic plant in the holding pins or there. I don't remember. You're gonna have to remind me of something like pigweed. Would that cause something like this?
- [09:36]
B
It could. So pigweed's a nitrate accumulator so you could have some acute death loss from nitrate poisoning. There's also a kidney specific disease that's fairly rare. In this particular case, that dry lots was open. I mean, they had access to that too, along with the pasture. So it's, you know, you're not helping me.
- [09:55]
A
What I'm trying to come up with, and they're.
- [09:57]
B
A significant portion of it was concrete. So there's, you know, not a lot of it was actually dirt pens. And they were, you know, they're really the way the fencing works. They ran them up in there and they shut the fence to trap them in there, run them through the building and then open the fence again and they go out. But they had had access to all that area the time before. But I don't disagree. I think it's a good thought. And we've seen that occasionally happen with, you know, that that ground gets disturbed when animals are in there. And then grass doesn't ever grow there. It's just whatever comes up first, which is usually something you don't want. And then you turn cattle back in there and you hold them there, that's what they're going to do. You know, they're going to eat whatever's in there because that's who they are and what they do.
- [10:34]
A
Okay, so we ruled that one out. But now I'm going to go back to one thing. You said 12, 12 dead, four under the tree. And we've got 25 cows. So we're missing nine somewhere. So I guess that's where I'd start. Where are the missing nine?
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, this is a. Maybe an alien podcast. No, so it was, you know, driving around, they noticed there was some. So I told you there was corn adjacent. They noticed some disturbance around the fence on one of those corners. And it was actually a low spot in the fence and some stocks were knocked down and they actually found all nine of them not far from that corner, hiding in the cornfield. So my interpretation of that was they were also seeking some shade.
- [11:12]
A
Yeah. Trying to get. Trying to get out of the heat. So concern. Concerned about the heat. Concerned a little bit. What's on my neurologic differential list at
- [11:20]
B
this point, you know, that I think the toxic plants got to still be on there. You mentioned organophosphates. Maybe we don't really have a history of that exposure with the heat and the seed shaking and the gaunadup. I always got to worry about water access to. And then I guess some other, you know, if they were on a. If they were being Fed something like a sulfur poisoning, potentially lead toxicosis. But affecting adults, not young animals would be the exact opposite what you would expect for lead. You can see some cases where cows can reach things calves can't. But I would consider that unlikely in this case also.
- [11:56]
A
But it looks like in my picture there's a pond in the pasture.
- [11:59]
B
Yeah, There's a dugout back there. So this is a historical image. And that pond happened to be dry at this time of year. So this was August. That dugout was completely empty.
- [12:08]
A
Gotcha. So where did the cattle get water?
- [12:10]
B
The other water source is up by the barn. If you look in the other image, there's kind of a white concrete apron. You can kind of see it next to the barn. The water is right on top of that.
- [12:20]
A
Okay, so thinking about some of the. Those differentials and I think good to think through those before you go do your necropsy. So you mentioned the typical. They didn't find a lot on necropsy, but you're going to send in some brain in this case because we're thinking neuro and you'd probably request. What tests would you request on the brain?
- [12:42]
B
I would start with histopathology. Knowing that some of our lead or differentials that can or cannot cause neurologic signs, even lead, you don't always get lesions. Water deprivation is another one. It's all timeline dependent. How long after they're clinical do they die? Sometimes they just die too fast where you don't develop those lesions or they're really subtle and hard to interpret. So knowing that you may or may not find those, I would also throw on the ancillary testing right away, just so there's not a delay. And so in this case, for lead, you would do a liver lead or kidney lead, either one. In this particular case, we threw a brain sodium on there so you can quantify the sodium in the brain. That normal is typically below 1600 part per million. And the water deprivation cases that I run into are Almost always over 2000 or even 2500 in a lot of cases.
- [13:31]
A
And what did you find in this case?
- [13:33]
B
In this case, they were like that, 2200 on like three of the adult brains.
- [13:37]
A
Yeah. So water deprivation, but now the pond or dugout empty, but there's automatic water there that they've got access to. I'm wondering, is there a short, is there, there a problem with the piping? Is it not working? Did the well go out? So that's the next thing I'd go check. What'd you find there?
- [13:56]
B
Water's running fine, but the challenge was the fence to get there was shut because the processing, they had to shut it to catch the cattle in a certain way, let them out the other side of the building, didn't open that gate back up to give them access to the automatic water.
- [14:09]
A
Oh, wow. So they basically just physically did not have access to the.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah, it was there, it was running, it just. Gate was shut.
- [14:16]
A
Now, I thought a lot of times the signs of water toxicosis would onset not necessarily when they were dehydrated, but when they got re exposed to water. So how did that happen in this case?
- [14:30]
B
That's a tough call. So, you know, we don't have a ton of history on this one. I wonder if the dugout didn't have some water in it, you know, and it was hard to say. Maybe would have run out of. Run out of water, you know, if cows were drinking it or, you know, this was August in the Midwest, it could have been 105 and you just don't have as much time. And maybe it was just a straight dehydration problem.
- [14:53]
A
Yeah. So it could have just been in that amount of time they got dehydrated enough, they started, started showing the clinical signs. And in that high sodium in the brain, is that pretty much confirmatory, that is the diagnosis, or are there other things that would cause high brain sodium?
- [15:10]
B
No, I think that's about the only thing that'll do it, especially if you've got dead neurons associated with it, given this history for sure. So that's really what happens when those animals get really dehydrated. The sodium kind of diffuses into the brain passively, no energy required, but it needs energy to get out. And when you get too much sodium in the brain, it interrupts the way that pump works. And it can't, you know, there's no energy production to run the pump, so it can't pump the sodium back out. So that's where your high brain sodium comes from. And then your rehydration comment, that's, you know, if you rehydrate them without control, all that water follows the sodium into the brain and then you get all the cerebral edema and you will get acute onset neurologic disease with that. So that's maybe the follow up to this is how do you rehydrate? You know what, I don't know where we're at 13 or 14 adult cows and basically 25 head of calves. And so the general recommendations are rehydrate slowly, replace that fluid deficit over 24 hours. Really easy to do with an individual animal with an IV line. Much harder to do on a herd based scenario with animals of wildly different weight classes.
- [16:14]
A
Well, and really hard to do with automatic water. You just can't do it. Right. So you have to keep that water. So in this case, the recommendation is keep that water closed off, get a tub and fill the tub only a certain amount or how do you handle that?
- [16:28]
B
Yeah, what we did in this case was they already had a dedicated water hauler on a trailer, so filled that up, took it out to the pasture, you know, close to that tree where everything was hiding and just ran it on the ground and forced them to slurp it up off the ground so they couldn't just get unfettered access to it. And you know, there's a bunch more live calves and it's because they're nursing off the cows. Right. So they still get replacement. So it's, you know, the cows were the first ones, they're going to kind of dominate that, which is probably fine. And just we had them do that about every three hours for the next day and a half and they, I think, lost one more out of the, out of the situation before they turned the rest of them around. But pretty positive outcome, I think all, all things considered on that one. You know, beyond the debts. Right? Yeah, therapeutically, I think that was a pretty positive outcome.
- [17:14]
A
Well, and I think that's the key is re. Rehydrating them slowly. And in this scenario, gosh, I can. It is one of the things that you're processing cattle you're going through, you've got all those thoughts of the logistics of making it work. And you see, simply forget that that gate is closed. And it's just a reminder to make sure that's an everyday thing. You know, we've got access to water exacerbated by high heat conditions, laid on
- [17:40]
B
a little bit of a drought scenario.
- [17:42]
A
Not having the dugout or pond out there that had water in it. Really challenging scenario. Anything else for take homes on this case, Scott?
- [17:50]
B
No, I think your point is whenever you, I mean, even if you just change the environment in this, you know, moved them out and shut some gates, I think you need to treat that like it's a brand new environment. And to that point you just got to make sure water access is there. And this is, you know, could have been just a simple, hey, open the gate and we're busy doing something else and forgot. And I could see myself doing that nine times out of ten, honestly.
- [18:11]
A
Yeah.
- [18:12]
B
So yeah. Not. Not surprising that something like this happens every once in a while. And this one was made worse that it was a, you know, kind of an operator herd. The guy running it didn't own the cows. And, yeah, ran into some issues that way, but, yeah.
- [18:26]
A
Excellent. Well, I appreciate you sharing and good, good case to talk through. And if you want more information, you can find more information about some of these toxicology cases on our BCI website. Thanks, Scott.
- [18:36]
B
Thanks for having. Me.