laminitis or foot rot? Expereienced advice needed

[gocanes719]

I have a real good steer that we show a week from today that has come up with some type of problem on his hind legs.  He has been pushed and has been on a high energy diet.  He is also in a cooler 10 hours or more a day. He walks almost like a penguin on his hind legs.  He kicks both hind legs out really far and tries to bear all of his weight on his inside heel of his back legs.  Of course we live in a high humidity wet area so I suspected hoof rot and treated him with excenel for one day.  The next day which was last Tuesday the hoof trimmer came out and evened up his heels and they said he was doing much better.  Before he came to trim his hind legs were extremely stiff and he was popping his pasterns quite a bit.  Now he is not popping and he is bending his hind legs but he is walking with them so far apart it is if he is swinging them more than he is moving them front to back. Now he is back to his old self, not being able to walk without having his hind legs more than 2 feet apart.  I have to weigh him in Saturday and the hoof trimmer said he didnt really see an abnormality in the shape of his hoof or foot rot but something had to have made him better the day I gave him the excenel.  This is driving me nuts and dont really know what to do to try to salvage him.  I guess he could be slightly foundered so maybe I should back off of his grain and hope that relieves him or I treat him with excenel for three days hoping that it could have been a case of foot rot way up in his foot that the trimmer missed.  It has happened before.  I gave him 10 cc's of glucosamine tonight hoping that might help.  This is a really good calf and all of this just started a few weeks ago.  I have got to do what I can to get this right.

 

[Bawndoh]

If this calf is on a "really" high energy diet it is clear he has laminitis.  This is how horses get it too.  Im not sure if you can reverse this condition or not.  This is why most feedlot steers can barely walk when they are finished, cause they have been on hard grain for a while.  This is also why many purebred breeders dont fatten their bulls when it comes to their sale, cause they wreck the feet on them and by the time the bull is 4 his feet are a wreck.  This is also why most show cattle(this goes for purebred as well) can be wrecks.

 

[DL]

The swinging legs makes me wonder about spastic paresis - is he real straight? does he shift his weight on his back feet? does he stand/walk on his toes? is the gastrocs tendon real tight? is he standing on cement?the drug may have had nothing to do with his improvement....

 

[gocanes719]

The swinging legs makes me wonder about spastic paresis - is he real straight? does he shift his weight on his back feet? does he stand/walk on his toes? is the gastrocs tendon real tight? is he standing on cement?the drug may have had nothing to do with his improvement....

Ha has always been extremely sound.  He is not straight in any way shape or form.  He weighs 1380 right now and gained quite a bit of weight in the last month.  He is a young steer and really took off.  He doesnt stand on concrete but he is in a cooler with a concrete floor.  If this is laminitis, is there anything I can apply or administer that could help the problem.  It gets much worse when he is on a hard surface,  he was walks better in the mornings then he does in the evenings. He is a really nice calf, this is a real shame.

 

[CAB]

How long if @ all are you making him stand tied up? It sounds to me by the way you are describing his movement that he may have structure problems, but you may have foundered him. If you catch that fast enough, you can help with overload with antihistamines for a few days and it may help now, but depending on what your plans are after the show, you'll need to be careful about withdraw times. This is JMO, I would not trim feet that close to a show. I would want to do it @ 1 month prior.

 

[gocanes719]

I don't deed him so I didn't founder him and the steer has never been free fed.  I am getting him looked at again today for a second opinion.  If he is foundered his feet dont show any signs what so ever.  The steer can run for short periods and track fine, when he stops is when he opens his hind legs back up, it is really odd.  I am hoping it is foot rot which we should be able to cure with a few days of therapy.

 

[red]

DL- how soon does spastic paresis show up? We have a heifer that had some pain when she first put weight on her leg. Is better now but seems to swing that back leg out when she walks. Is only 2 weeks old.

Red

 

[Jill]

If it is foot rot, our trimmer had us put LA200 right on the outside of the hoof, but you could see the problem.  I don't have any bright suggestions, but I would be suprised if it was hoof rot if your trimmer didn't catch it.

 

[gocanes719]

We have had cases this year that werent caught.  They are getting it way up in their hoof between their toes not in the normal places.  I have an expert checking him today so we will see.  This is a pretty odd case.  Nver seen one get like this in my 20 years of doing this.

 

[Sterling]

I know this is an older post but this is exactly what our current steer is doing.  What happend with your steer did this ever get better or what did you do to inprove.  we had our steers hoofs timmed about a mt ago and the guy said nothing about foot rot but someone else brought that up also.  He also has been eating a LOT of grain could that be the problem and if so can it be reversed?  our steer looks great but he walks like a penquin just like this post ... please help we still have a lot of shows.
P.S.  my husband is the one that use to get on this forum all the time.. he use to love reading up on post and we always enjoyed reading red's  post.  I am so sorry for the loss.