Roto virus

[TPX]

Just wondering what everyone uses to treat this virus.  We only seem to get a couple of cases a year and its always seems to be some cows that we bought a couple of years ago I suspect that the past owner use to scour guard which we dont do b/c we never have to big of problem.  Our vet says that we should scour gaurd our whole herd but I am not a fan of that if we only have a 2-4 cases out of 200 cows it seems to be alot of extra cost for not that much.  We always seperate the sick calves and cows and treat with electrolytes and antibiotics but was just wondering what others use and what works the best for them.

 

[CAB]

  Doesn't seem to me to be roto virus. What makes you think that it is? If it were roto, you would more than likely have way more troubles than 2-4 cases / yr.

 

[TPX]

Thats what the local vet said when we had her look at one calf when she was here one year.  She might be wrong I suppose never did look for a second opinion b/c we never lost a calf and were always able to cure them it just seemed to knock them back a little bit compared to the other calves.

 

[Jill]

The key is to catch it early, we use either Spectam Scour-Halt (the red stuff for pigs)  or the little blue SustainIII bolus with Banamine and Baytil.  We gave shots for several years and they work great if you know expected calving dates, but it would get expensive and time consuming for 200.

 

[C-CROSS]

Did you vet do a fecal sample to be sure it was roto??  It makes me wonder as it doesn't usually come in 2-4 cases a year and most of the time it takes IV's and more to piull through.  We had it a long time ago and now vaccinate our herd every year and don't have any trouble.

 

[CAB]

TPX, the reasonthat I asked, what makes you think that it was roto virus was , that unless you had a lab confirmed diagnosis, You couldn't be sure. The name alone says why I doubt that it is roto virus. You can't really treat a virus, it has to run it's coarse, and unless you are very, very lucky, chances are that you would have had a whole a sick calves, not unlike any virus type of outbreak, you treat the secondary symptoms. My "GUESS" is that you had some type of bacterial scours and that would be more possible to treat a few and go on. If you have a positive diagnosis then a vaccination program should be successfull in helping to control the roto virus. The people that I have talked to over the years that have had roto never get by that lucky by far and it is usually a terrible calving season period until the cattle build up natural immunity.

 

[TPX]

I suppose there is could be something else, the vet never did run any tests or anything she just said that it looked like roto virus but I thought that it looked like a scours also so that was how I was treating it till that point and I geuss I still kinda treat it that way.  Like I said we never really worried about b/c it never caused any losses.

 

[Jill]

Ok, stupid question, the answer I gave you was for scours , is that not what that is?

 

[CAB]

Yeah Jill we're talking about calf scours, but there are so many different causes of calf scours that you need a diagnosis and hopefully a sensitivity test to treat sometimes. The occasional case of ecoli calf scours usually is not as big of deal compared to scours caused by a virus or say Kypto. If it is an ecoli scour, ie. bacterial, the quicker that you are all over that type of scour the better and usually good response to treatment, but a scour caused by a virus is tougher just by the name, VIRUS, they don't respond to treatment as well, but yes, we need to treat the secondary symptoms or the calves will dehydrate and you will have losses, but as far as having a few outbreaks if it is a scours caused by a virus, that would be very abnormal B/C that virus is going to go through the whole herd until the herd builds it's immunity. Treat a bacterial scour and clean up the cattle's surroundings, VACCINATE for a virus caused scour.