40 percent death loss in 2 month old
calves.
Only from the first calf he
and occurring within a 3 week span.
What happened?
We'll find out today on
Science with Bc. This is Talks Talk. I'm
Brad White here with Doctor. Scott Fritz, and
it's Scott welcome. Interested to get into this
case with you. How are you this morning?
You know what we're doing well. This is
a
pretty good headline, which many of these cases
do make at times? Yeah. You have a
a good start to this 1 in that
it's a little bit unusual because you've got
a, a cow calf herd.
There's some first calf he.
Some adult cows, both the first calf efforts
and adult cows have calves.
The death loss is only occurring. There's in
cab from first calf efforts, but it had
occurred at a significant rate and in a
relatively
short period of time, and I'm gonna go
out on a,
branch here and say, you probably had him
do crops at the start. Yep.
It's always a good place to start. So
this... You know, just like you said, this
is the
headline per s, I guess, brings up more
questions than it does answers.
And so, you know the fight out that
there were cows and He and the cab
were only from the first calf half first
was a, you know, a step that we
needed. We also found out that those 2
populations of cows were managed separately
So the adult cows were managed basically as
an isolated herd and the first half he
were managed as an isolated herd. There was
no c ming between the 2.
And so when I say managed, I'm talking
about winter management from pulling off pasture in
the fall, run through the winner and now
it turn out. So these are spring cab,
and these these calves are a couple months
old. And the and the first thing, I
mean, I start thinking about the normal stuff.
Right? So scour...
Respiratory disease. They're a little bit since they're
2 months old. They're a little bit outside
my window when I would think of a
big scour outbreak. And respiratory disease while it
a curves and pre calves. It typically doesn't
have this high mortality. It may have high
morbidity, but a lot of times our pre
calves don't have that high of a mortality.
It 40 percent. Would that would that be
kind of your feel? Yeah. And it's, you
know, this is toxicology so we get to
ignore infectious disease, but those are always in
places to start, which we always do. Right?
And that's you know, trying to... We thought
the same thing. They're too old for scholars.
You know, the 40 percent death loss in
3 weeks and pre week cows from respiratory
disease.
Sounds weird, but then we started getting into
the gross knee crop and they were, you
know, the practitioner was mentioning some evidence or
respiratory disease. And so know, I think maybe
that's the place to start and where we
kinda get into our our diagnostic work workout.
Yeah. So what did what did they find
on just the gross knee crops?
You know, they were really just saying there
was pneumonia. They just described it as, you
know, cra eventual consolidation. There was... They described
Bro pneumonia is what I got over the
phone.
They mentioned that there had been no response
to inflammatory on microbial therapies of, you know,
they tried a bunch of different things really
didn't appreciate any response.
So in pre winning Beard, I mentioned in
some of the work that we've done previously,
it it is about 1 and 5 herd.
Will have an issue with pre
B d. And in those herd that have
an issue with
pre B d,
only about 15 to 20 percent of the
calves are typically affected. Now, certainly, you could
have a higher outbreak, but but also, I
mentioned pretty low
mortality. So it's surprising that these calves would
be affected
in that shorter of time frame and actually
at this time because most of our pre
B would occur around the 456
month of age range in those calves. So...
But they're finding it here, is it is
it possible that it... It's just b or
did they have any adjunct signs that they
saw it either in the live cab or...
At bankruptcy.
Yeah. So the, I guess the clinical syndrome
they described. I guess we should back up
just a little bit. So these caps had
been branded and vaccinated at branding at and
then turned out. And by I turned out,
as they were let out, they were trail
down the road, and I don't remember how
far It was over a mile that they
walked these pears down the road,
and turned into a pasture.
And so you have that kind of
temporal
association with processing. Right? So that, you know,
either some questions there,
But as they got out on pasture, they
would see these calves, they said they would
be somewhat, you know, clinically normal, then they
would go stern ladder
to really rec overcome and then die pretty
quickly, you know, within a couple hours enough
time where they could see them, try to
do something, but then they would die anyway.
And I only those and a little bit
different management for the calves from he than
the calves from cows and that the calves
from cows weren't trail as far.
But everybody got the same things at processing
or branding time. Right? Yep. Same, yeah, Same
shop protocol, everything.
So that makes it a little bit lower
on my list that there's something going on
with the vaccines or any other procedures that
we're done. So just because it's only affecting
this 1 group or seems to be affecting
them worse than the others. So at at
gross knee, basically
saw some pneumonia,
but that... They kinda wanted to keep going
because didn't see enough necessarily there that they
thought was causing all of the problems.
No. And they, you know, kinda mentioned with
the rec if those calves would try to
stand and they would, you know, you get
some tremble in the muscles of the high
legs.
They they... The word they do use was
weakness.
And so, you know, which certainly could be
with respiratory disease, but like we've talked it
just doesn't.
It would be abnormal for pre winning respiratory
disease to have that big of a problem.
So we recommend just sending in as we
always do a pretty robust submission just to
make sure that we can rule out things,
you know, if we don't have, we can't
do it, but if we have, it doesn't
mean we need to test it kind of
thing. Just Yep. And so what what all
did they send in? What samples did you
want them to send? So would... We always
talk about liver and kidney for talks, liver
the metabolic organ and kidneys tip? Weekly ex
excruciating, heart, spleen,
brain, if we can get it ocular fluid,
those kind of things lung in this case,
wouldn't it add some lesions in it. Weekly
and then we wanted some skeletal muscle just
because of the... You know, they described the
weakness. And honestly, if we can get heart,
diaphragm tongue and skeletal
we can do a pretty robust rule out
of anything that causes a from a to
perspective. And so are you looking at fresh
and fixed samples of those? Of those tissues
or do you want
fixed only or fresh only? Fresh fix both.
Yeah. So the pistol pathology needs the fixed?
Typically,
toxicology needs fresh,
and culture and that kind of thing also
needs fresh tissue. So... So when we talk
about sending those samples, especially fresh sample, and
let's say we're in a time of warm
weather or extreme cold weather. What kind of
care do Have to take in packing those
or how quick do I need to get
them to the lab to make sure that
the fresh samples are fresh.
Do the best you can. So it's... If
you can get them out and on ice
as fast as you can if you can't
ship them that day, throw them in the
fridge.
Ideally, you can get them in a box
on ice and get them on their way
as fast as you possibly can. If I
have to hold them overnight, should Put... You
you mentioned the fridge or should I drop
them in the freezer? Does that change anything
if I freeze and t samples or or
would you rather have them just chilled.
It really depends on your timeline. So if
it's Thursday on holiday weekend and you can't
ship it till Monday, we're not gonna get
until Tuesday, freezing, it's probably not a bad
idea. You don't freeze anything you wanna look
at under the microscope, though. Don't don't freeze
any of the his paths that the fixed
sample. Keep the fixed stuff just informal,
Otherwise, if it's just gonna be overnight, I
would just keep them in the fridge. K.
Excellent. Alright. So you got some samples in
this case and what did you start to
see on the his pathology?
So, on his path only they confirmed an
pneumonia, it's not that difficult to see. And
I've looked at the slides, there was, you
know, there was some pretty severe consolidation in
some areas of those lungs.
Think we had lungs off of 3 different
calves. 2 of them had pretty severe pneumonia.
1 of them had none at all. And
so, you know, it's still dead, but it
didn't have the pneumonia. So kinda...
You start questioning things.
Did some his path on the muscle and
started seeing degeneration necrosis some mineral visualization of
those my sites both in the cardiac muscle
and in the skeletal muscle.
What does that what does that make you
think of when you see that? What are
your differentials for a my in a calf
young?
Half this young, the first things, vitamin E
or s millennium, you know, kind of a
nutritional,
other less likely things, Ion forces would be
on that list. Yeah. To to with the
ion for and the vitamin e look similarly.
Again, I'm not a pathologist, so maybe there
are some subtle differences, but... Yeah but we
gotta loop all my office together in that
way. K. So let's explore that Ion for
1 just a bit because, if if they
had an ina
exposure to a higher dose of ion, say
there was a mixing error in a creep
feed,
that might fit in the scenario? These cab
are still a little bit young to be
eating much, But is is something like that
possible. Is that what you're describing with... When
you say on forth? Yeah. That's possible. And
we've seen some... We've seen some cases. There
are ion fours in dr products
that are not meant to be dr, but
are dr anyway,
that we've seen some issues with that, The
dose, they're just not a big safety factor
on those when you use those concentrated products,
It's hard to do that. It's So a
a dr that they would be administering to
calves for some other disease that has an
eye for in it if they overdose these
little calves.
You certainly could see an issue. Yeah. Certainly
could. And typically with cattle, the lesions are
mainly isolated in the cardiac muscle.
In this particular case, the skeletal muscle lesions
were more severe, so that also made a
little less likely for us.
It's confusing though when you go to Know
this is Bo science, but in in small
rum it's and pigs, it's more of a
skeletal muscle issue. But in in cattle, on
toxicity mainly cardiac. Yep. So it's still 1
of the things on our list and you
wanna investigate. I think it's important to talk
about because sometimes we use... On for so
ubiquitous.
We forget that they have those toxic principles.
So and we know what in another species.
Right? There's other species way more sensitive.
Than cattle. But in in this case, you
did some investigation see and and basically confirmed
no ion for exposure that we could track
down in any way. Yeah. They didn't have
creep feet out yet. They had just been
turned in. They weren't giving anything at the
time. Of, you know, I've we've seen some
cases even where people
bolus of Mu really, which is obviously not
outs it's meant to be used,
but there were some thoughts that it would
maybe protect from Cox city, which know, anyway,
That would be the reason people be using
it. Especially in cab of this age is
worried about Cox City. Right. Right? So
here, we don't think On for and it's
got... Skeletal muscle involvement. So you're leaning more
towards vitamin e, deficiency, a lot of times
when we talk about vitamin e s millennium
is is part of that discussion. Did you
do any follow up tests for vitamin e
and or millennium? Yeah. So we we'll typically
do vitamin e and millennium and liver. Most
mortem on these cases. And the s millennium,
in my experience is less likely. And I...
Part of that's because Sole palladium is legally
regulated everybody knows that we need it. And
so it's typically supplied in Cal mineral, like
it's supposed to be... We just don't see
a s millennium deficiency that often. And those
2 things and and maybe it's just as
I remember it, linked together vitamin E millennium,
but you're saying you see vitamin e deficiency
way more commonly than us millennium
deficiency. See even if they're in a s
millennium deficient area. Yes. So and honestly, the
s millennium deficient area seem like we run
into more s millennium toxic
in those cases, and I think it's just
over supplementation.
You know, the areas of the country with
high sal palladium and forage and that kind
of thing I already know it. And so
they're less likely to overdo it, and I
think. What signs would I see with millennium
deficiency versus toxic? See The deficiency is what
is... It been classically described as white muscle
disease, and there... It's always linked together vitamin
e millennium deficiency.
And that's it's typically... I mean, what we're
talking about here is is pretty much how
it's described.
You... It's a...
You get pale muscles they're... You get necrosis
mineral visualization that kind of thing.
S toxicity. There it depends if we're talking
the acute form or the chronic form. The
acute is more of a cardiac collapse.
And so you get... You know, you... It's
kinda hard to distinguish sometimes, but you get
this big fl be hard and a bunch
of fluid backup, and they... You know, they'll...
It's usually after an injection, and they're gonna
die within 24, 48 hours.
The chronic form then is the hair and
of lesions that we've all been, you know,
I we think about it more in horse
you get the horizontal cracks that never grow
out.
And those oils will actually s off if
you give them enough time. You know, the
hair gets pretty brittle. So you get ce
titanium that supplement... As that substitutes and ke
makes it pretty weak.
So you get some hair breakage and that
kind of thing. So... And and that would
be the more chronic form of s millennium.
Toxicity.
And in in this case,
s millennium normal. So let's let's talk vitamin
e a little bit. What are the expected
signs that you would see with vitamin e,
deficiency and is it possible to clinically
differentiate it from millennium deficiency? No. It's it's
also would be white muscle. Disease, and you
can't separate it until you do some analysis
like we did post mortem, it would be
identical. K. So back to these cases... Grossly
with this information in hand,
did you... Were you able to look at
the heart or talk to the veterinarian that
was involved and say, okay, what did the
what did the hearts look like that we
see any signs of of heart disease? We
asked and even, you know, how... What was
the color of the skeletal muscle, and that
can be hard to appreciate. I think It
especially if it's weed need crops to him
and if it's summer winter, what I? I
think cat, young calves are pale anyway. You
know, a lot of them are born iron
are fish deficient. I... It's hard for me
to sort that out. And you've seen V.
Right? It's pretty pale and Yeah. I I
don't put a lot of faith, I guess,
in the color of muscle at and knee
grabs. Too. Yeah. Hard to tell. Would you
expect the hearts to be enlarged or miss?
No. I don't think I would. You know,
there... They may be a little bit more
fl team you know, you may appreciate some
congestion in different body cavities, but you might
not. Yeah. Because in these in these little
calves, you you'd expect that heart to be
relatively tu and
should certainly be heart shaped. So any
any fl ness would seem to be pretty
abnormal for a lot of these calves. But
they didn't they didn't see any of that
as you talk through
So to tell me a little bit about
the process of vitamin e deficiency, because I'm
trying to think through...
What would be their typical source of item
e, how much storage reserves do they have?
Would they have got it from their dams?
Should they get it in the milk? Tell
tell me about the process of vitamin e.
So the the vitamin e status of the
calf is gonna be dependent upon the c.
So they're gonna get most of, you know,
it transfers across the placenta a little bit
better than vitamin a, but I would just
ignore that. Everything they're gonna get gonna come
through the C, and so it's all lost
quality. It's probably gonna be related to the
ration of those he.
As they were fed through the winter. And,
you know, it
I was worried about the calf from the
cows on this her too. Just, you know,
they could have been teeter on the edge
and we just didn't push them as hard
as we did on this group, and And,
you know, when I've seen big outbreaks like
this, it almost seems like there's some sort
of physical exercise that goes into it to
set them up to have a big...
Big episode like this. So if we have
a my skeletal the muscle cardiac muscle,
exercise
would not be the recommended course. Right Really.
Could help be exacerbate whatever clinical signs we're
seeing. Yeah. So it it's hard to sort
out, You know, we're we're this far after
the fact and trying to go back and
You know, maybe the ration was formulated appropriately,
but the vitamin pack had been on in
storage for a long time. And we know
those fast soluble vitamins will
decrease with storage and they can almost deplete
to where there's almost none in there depending
on storage conditions. And when you try to
go sort back through that on a product
that's already gone. It it's really difficult to
do. So in the... You said the vitamin
e's is gonna transfer mostly in the c,
we'll... That calf get any from
external sources as he's nursing the dam or
once he's passed the classroom and his got
has clothes. He's not gonna get any vitamin
any from anywhere else? Does he get some
from the milk or anywhere else in the
environment? There won't be a lot of milk.
It'll be once he starts. You know, consuming
his own feed, he will, you know, when
you get... When he transitions off a milk
diet,
but they'll... You know, they,
the way nature happens the cow intentionally loads
that calf or whatever he's gonna need for
storage for the first couple months of life.
And is that stored in the liver, and
then he uses it from there? Stored and
liver. And it's it's mainly an antioxidant. And
so I think what really sets these calves
up as you go through that big physical
exert type thing. In this case, walking them,
yep mile and a half down the road,
you know, which doesn't sound that far, but
Yeah teeter on the edge. I think that's
enough, and you just start getting some of
those reactive oxygen species from the muscle damage
and they just can't handle it. And does
that tie in in any way to our
pneumonia that we found in a few of
these caps? Is this with this have been
helping our immune system or can't the lack
of it, thereby hurting the immune system? Yeah.
I think it's it's safe to say that
the vitamin need deficiency didn't help with the
pneumonia stuff. It I'd probably set them up.
The fact that there were calves that were
dead without pneumonia, I think gives credence that
the pneumonia is more of a secondary issue.
So if you're thinking about preventing this, next
time. Obviously,
vitamin E management
sounds like cow,
nutrition, he for nutrition more so than something
I would do with the calves. Yeah. Which
common for a lot of the things we
deal with. Right? Is that that nutrition on
the cow herd is very, very important. And
when you it's kinda of the bottom of
the pyramid and when it's faulty then the
pyramid doesn't stack very high. So do I
need to have a specific diet? Those cows
are on during in a certain period or
or rather, I need to really concentrate the
last few months before they have or is
it a year round
nutrition that I... Should be worried about on
that cow to prevent this in the caps.
So vitamin ease a fat soluble volume vitamin
and they should pick it up as they're
forging naturally, and there should be some in
the stored forge, but that's gonna deeply even
in the store forge about the time where
that last trimester where we're really ramping up
and their metabolic demands through the roof,
but honestly, most winter call rations are already
formulated enough to provide that. It just... That's
what begs the question. We don't really know
why in this case.
Was there something that happened either with the
formulation or the actual product that went in
there, something there was not right to set
these calls up? So you're saying in in
hay, we say store forage. I'm thinking hay.
And if I make the hay in the
early summer,
Store it all the way through to the
end of the next winter right for my
cows are having. I wouldn't expect to have
a lot of vitamin e in my hay,
But if I'm providing some sort of supplement,
that's where they would get it. Is that...
Am I yep. Hearing that correctly? Because I
kinda think the same thing vitamin a would
be similar? Yeah. We... You know, we kinda
loop them to lump them together and it's
all in green, growing forage, fresh forge is
the perfect source. Those cows are built to
extract that and store it.
You know, they they're used to not having
that during the winter, and so they store
it up over the summer,
but it's, you know, it's not hard to
supplement them, and like you're saying through a
vitamin and mineral pack and some sort of
concentrator supplement that they're feeding over the winter.
Now would you give in this case, if
we go back to this case when you
figured this out,
what's the first action treatment wise? Do you
go in and give those cab an an
injection of Ad and e or do you
do do you do something else for them
or try to provide mineral at that point?
So the easiest band aid is to inject
it, and there... There's a plethora of... Do
vitamin e and S millennium products out there.
I don't know that one's any better than
the other.
The challenge with this 1 is they return
to pasture and that sure was enormous in
this case and that wasn't gonna get done.
Mean, so I guess you just hope you
get through it until they start forging on
their own and and picking it up naturally.
Yeah. So if these, you know, if these
calves were still wherever they ka hadn't gone
through yet, and they were seeing it prior
to the processing, we sure could have had
an injection, but
timing didn't work out in our favor in
this case. So let's say we could do
an injection. And in this case, up a
little bit,
maybe based on your earlier comments, I'm a
little bit concerned because I've got a lot
of times vitamin e and s millennium are
together? These guys are normal on millennium, They're
low on vitamin e. Do I have to
worry about inducing a s millennium toxicity.
A by
creating a problem by fixing the last 1.
I would say no. And it's...
As long as you're injecting the proper appropriate
volume for the weight to the calf. You
shouldn't. Let most spike in the liver for
the first 24, 48 hours and then they'll
eliminate that. And we've got... There's quite a
bit of work showing the kinetics of that.
It... Where we see the the acute injectable
toxic c is when it's a, you know,
we've set the syringe for 6 way calves,
and then we got a tailed 200 pounder,
you know, at the end of the cabin
period comes through, and that's where the problem
is. So be sure if you're given those
injections, especially with s millennium
that we're at the right weight for the
right calf, meaning, I may have to change
it. If I'm running through calves that are
born over a hundred day period. I'm gonna
have a a big weight period in that
group. Yep. That's a... You know, that's at
least where we see it. So anything else
that you would do in this case, Ideally,
we'd give an injection, but they couldn't do
it here,
so they got them on green grass,
anything that you would do either to manage
it now or prevent it in the future
besides what we've discussed
We kinda wrestled with that. You do you
try to round them back up and just
inject him, but we just talked about how
exercise kinda sets him up for that and
as big as this pasture as they would
have been some exercise involved.
And so it it really was a kind
of a internal battle on what we do
with them,
and some you know, we're... I guess we're
hoping that the problem has gone away. Now
as far as
trying to avoid it,
this 1, you never would have figured it
out until it started happening.
Because, you know, the the rational was formulated
appropriately. We figured out after the fact, but
there had to been something
either it got missed in the inclusion, the
the mineral pack had been stored for a
lot, I don't know. And we're never gonna
find that out. But something happened there that
didn't... That wasn't supposed to happen, and we
just... Were not gonna figure it out until
you have this kind of disaster on the
other end. So, do you the best you
can to try to prevent it. But then
I think the the other take home here
is relatively early in the process.
They did some further diagnostic. To figure it
out. Right? Sooner you figure this out sooner
we can come up with the solution to
move forward. Yep. Try to make some decisions,
but that obviously, in this case, there was
a lot of balancing going on there. Excellent.
It's any places to find more resources on
vitamin e and or s millennium deficiency? Yeah.
There's some some show notes on the website
and we'll have a... Know, kind of a
white paper right up up there to provide
some more references and sources if anybody wants
to do some more reading. Excellent. There's a
toxicology tab right on the beast
website. If you have a
toxicology case you'd like us to talk about,
you can send us an email at bc
at k u dot edu d u