New to posting/trouble with eating

[diana9807]

I am new to posting on here.  I have been on the site the past couple years reading peoples issues and your  comments.  All of which have been wonderful help.  I am having an issue that hopefully some new insight might help. We have been showing cattle for the past 3 years, and learning every stop of the way. Every year, there is always a finicky eater, but we usually resolve it and get them up and going.  This year, we had one that was born here (our very first baby!!) Anyways, he was born in March and we weaned him in September. He was on creep feed practically the whole time and always had a great appetitie.  Never changed his feed at all.  Same feed faithfully.  In the end of October, he had a small pnemonia episode and was treated with nuflor. In November, he bloated and it wasn't a mild bloat.  It was so bad when I found him that needles, beer, oil, therabloat, nothing worked. The only thing that saved his life was a buck knife. I held all feed from him and offered only hay and water. I should mention that he weighed 740 pounds at the time.  He was getting 18 pounds of feed a day broken up into two separate feedings. Three days later, right after he was given a couple pounds of feed, he bloated again, so due to circumstances and the holidays, the vet came out and put a trocar in.  Keep in mind, I know it is a last resort, but his bloat was never a mild one. It would hit him so fast that it would go up over his back and make it feel like bubble wrap.  Also keep in mind, his feed is medicated with aeromycin at all times. We even had sodium bicarb in the feed also.  Even with the trocar in, he bloated again in 3 days.  So, we were told to practically starve him for a week, only offering hay and water.  They said to completely empty his gut and get everything gone incase there was a bug.  We also gave him a magnet just incase someone threw something out and he got it.  Probiotics were given twice daily.  At the end of the week, we had a complete new feed mixture made up.  It was a very simple one, but due to advice from another group of people that had issues with bloating from cotton seed hulls (the fluffy kind), we withheld that from our new mix.  Also, the mix we were feeding before was a premix that we only had to add our own corn, molasses and oats.  (always the same corn also)  The new mix used soyhulls, corn, oats, molasses, salt and mineral and soybean mill.  We of course added our own aeromycin.  He ate this ok, we worked him up really slowly and he got back on full feed.  I pulled his trocar with no issues (which was in for a month per the vet).  It has been two months and no bloating.  Doing very well as far as that aspect goes.  Now, he doesn't want to eat much.  He leaves all the fines.  We did change his feed up a bit by adding CLE oil, and barley but we changed him over to that very slowly.  He needed some extra fat to get him caught back up because he fell behind so quickly.  Now, I am lucky to have him eat 10 pounds a day.  He eats hay great, but he doesn't get hay until he has eaten his grain.  He is in a stall by himself because I don't want him eating the others feed that he originally bloated on.  Two hours to eat and he still won't finish it up.  As soon as he is left out, he runs over to see it the others cleaned up their feed.  I was told last night to switch him over to a horse sweet feed.  Like the person said, either you spend the money and get him to eat, or you lose out on him growing.  I have used sure champ in the past years.  didn't know if this is something I would want to try now or opinions.  We have two other steers but really would like to use this guy being he is our first home bred.  He is an i-80 out of an Immortal cow.  Hairy as can be.  He has great depth to him, but he used to have a wide top and that has disappeared.  We will be showing in the end of March for a jackpot (mainly for practice for the kids and experience) then our fair is not until July.  I would estimate him to be at 900 pounds now. A bit behind where he should be.  Calf manna came into mind, but I am really open to any suggestions.  As far as antibiotics with the trocar, he was given excede and then draxxin.  The vet told me that the pnemonia could have affected his nerve that made the stomach work as a possible reason for his bloating too.  (just trying to think of any questions you might ask).  I greatly appreciate any information you have to offer.

 

[Sir Loin]

Diana,

This will probably bring the roof down on me again, but here I go anyway, as you have received no responses.

From the symptoms and brief history you provided I have two suspicions.
1. salt/mineral salt overdose
2. PEM induced by excess sulfur.
The condition you described can be passive from birth if the momma had an excess of sulfur.
I would forget the show, because I don't think he will ever fully recover.
I would take him off everything except hay and pasture and see how he does.
If you must feed him feed, ration it and check the sulfur content and no molasses as it is high in sulfur.

The issue is that some ethanol plants clean with sulfuric acid, and each batch of DDGs could contain anywhere from 0.4% to 1% sulfur,” she says.
With maximum diet sulfur levels for cattle suggested at 0.3-0.4%, in the right scenario, adding a supplemental feed could quickly surpass even a well-adjusted cow’s ability to avoid toxicity.

http://beefmagazine.com/pastur...oxicity-range-cattle
So you may need to have your water, feed and hay tested for sulfur content.
Talk to your vet about the possibility he has a mild case of PEM.
He/she might be just be treating the symptoms and not the cause.
Hope this helps and good luck
Sir Loin

 

[obie105]

Sure champ would really help at this point. Had a heifer that was a chronic bloater and she never did it again after starting it. Made me a believer way back before it was popular. Also next time try a garden hose to let down bloat. The above heifer was so bad I kept a garden hose to be able to let her down as needed. We feed sure champ year round or something made by vita ferm to everything on the place.

 

[GoWyo]

We had a steer that we weaned the end of August (he was an April 1 calf).  He bloated and I wound up sticking him with a knife because I couldn't get the bloat relieved with a hose and he was very distressed and trying to go down.  Vet diagnosed the original problem as being the same bug as pneumonia, but it did not present as pneumonia and instead affected his vagus nerve -- which is the one that controls belching at the stomach end of the esophagus.  We put in a trocar and treated him same as for pneumonia, and he did fine for 10 days or so and pulled the trocar because it kept plugging up with gunk anyway.  Then he started bloating every day 2 to 3 times per day.  We tubed him several times per day to relieve the bloat so he could eat.  He fell way behind the other calves and dropped out of any possibility of being a show steer.  After tubing him for half of September, all of October and November and halfway through December, he finally quit bloating and got his vagus nerve working again.  Now he is fine and eats all the time, but he is in with the yearlings that will go to grass in May and feed out next winter.

 

[ejoe326]

Sulfur is not the cause of all problems in cattle and bloat does not equal polio. 

You seem to have a pretty good handle on this.

Did he stop eating well about 2 months ago?  I will assume he is after a feed he likes the taste of better.  Molasses is not evil and adding that alone might get him back eating. 

I agree that Sure Champ is an excellent product.  We have a product that I believe is locally labeled.  It has a ton of fiber in it and was designed to feed to feedlot cattle to prevent bloat.  I will assume a good feed dealer will know about it.

We had one several years ago we had to put on free choice hay to rest the gut and get it stretched back out.  The theory was he'd shrunk up so much he felt full really fast.  It was pure trial and error getting him started.  We used the probiotic paste religiously.  I don't think you can even do this anymore but we fed rumen contents and it did seem to help.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[kharigel]

I apologize I'm new here and haven't figure out exactly how
To post yet. We have a steer my daughter is raising for the Oct show. We can't seem to clear up the cake batter poop. He's eating well his poop just won't get past the consistency of cake batter. We have added extra cotton seed hulls, beet pulp, given sulfar bolus, hay. You name it. I even took a sample to the vet and he couldn't find anything.

 

[librarian]

I agree with Sir Loin that you should just turn him out on grass and and offer him hay as his rumen bugs readjust. Just grass hay for fiber with no alfalfa. It seems reasonable to me that some animals tolerate what you are doing better than others. It's really interesting all the factors that go into developing show cattle. Experience is probably the most important and you are sure getting that. Sounds, to me, like he will bloat again on show feed, sooner or later, so better to feed a different animal.

 

[vc]

The first steer that my son raised, started bloating at about 900 pounds, The first time he bloated we had to tube him and hit him with a mineral oil drench, after that it was an occasional bloat that needed treatment, with minor bloating every time he ate. We started feeding him a half flake of oat hay an hour prior to his grain and the bloat stopped. His gut needed the hay to get it started is what i made out of it.

If you still are thinking of showing him, I would turn him out on pasture and hay for about 2 weeks, then start him back on feed, slowly and never push him, he would always have hay available with his grain.