Our first case of milk fever

We had our first case of milk fever for the season today. The symptoms were a very wobbly ("drunk") cow as she stumbled back to the cowshed. She had calved sometime during the night and was protecting her calf in the paddock when we went to check the herd in the morning.

After giving her a bottle of Oral-Cal and putting her on some fresh grass it looks like she'll pull through. At least she was determined enough to follow her calf all the way back to the cowshed without falling over.

One of our companions on the Livestock Health farming course mentioned yesterday that they'd had three cases of Milk Fever on their farm since calving began and two of the cases were fatal. That's why we dust the pastures with magnesium each day and recently began drenching the milkers - so that they have abundant minerals in their systems and are hopefully strong enough to avoid conditions such as milk fever.

problems on the farm | cow diseases | milk fever | cows

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