Cow dead..Answers?

Just got a call from back home, they found one of my better young cows (one in my avatar) dead. She was in a picked cornfield with 50+ others. She wasn't due till May so I think calving can be ruled out.....any ideas? Just looking for the most opinions possible to try to figure this out.

Aflatoxin?

Should also note they have been in this field for quite some time.

-XBAR- said:

Aflatoxin?

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Shouldn't it of effected before now?

Maybe chocked on a corn cob.

A  few years ago, I had a donor die at the ET center, and she appeared to be walking to the water bowl, and dropped on the trail. They did a post mortem on her and she had a abcess on rumen that had broke. The vet said it may have been caused by an old hardware injury to her rumen and her body had encapsuled the infection. He said that deaths of this nature are far more common than most of us think. I have had this happen before on occasion, when a cow that appeared to be in perfect health was found dead a few hours later, with no appearance reason for her death. The vet told me that this cow of mine, would have died in literally seconds after that abscess broke and the bacteria got into her blood stream. I am not sure if your cow was anything like this, but it may be. To my knowledge, my cow had never been sick a day in her life ( at least that could be seen).

Hardware was my first thought.  Did she have a magnet?

In 1991 I had some cows over in a small pasture that had previously been farmed. There were many small, and quite shallow, grooves running thru it -- looked like at some point they were irrigation divits. Any way, one morning I went to check the cows and one of them had layed down in one of those channels (Not unlike a corn row I might add ) and when she reached back to lick herself she partially rolled over and could not get up. She bloated over night and was dead by morning. It sure does not take very much to do that to a cow. Once they start to bloat from laying wrong, it only takes a couple hours and they will sufficate and die. May not be your cause, but it does happen - sorry for your tuff luck!

Terry

Glenstory said:

Hardware was my first thought.  Did she have a magnet?

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No she did not.

Unfortunately, without getting an autopsy done everything is really just speculation as there are really endless possibilities.  Even with an autopsy often times all that is achieved is ruling out possible causes rather than finding the actual cause.

Related to what Justintime said several years ago in the winter I was out feeding cows bales and as I was driving the tractor away from the bale feeder the cows were coming out at a fast walk all looking perfectly fine when suddenly I saw one fall down it would have been less than a minute until I got to her and she was dead.  This was a relatively young cow in good condition that had appeared to be in perfect health.  I did not get an autopsy done and just attributed it to some kind of freak incident and had no other problems that winter.

Hmmm....just sounds like it was a more than likely a freak thing. Thanks for the input guys and gals.

I know cows are not the brightest animal, but a bred cow of mine made me look stupid last winter. I had a cow down (not in labor) that could not get back up, even when we walked close to her and pushed on her, she would try and try but could not get back up. I called my vet out and it was an easy fix that cost me a $50 call out fee that I could of done myself. My cow was laying with her legs up a small hill and could not get up. We grabbed her legs and rolled her over with her legs down hill and she got right up. The vet told me he has seen cows dye from bloat cause of little things like that, she laid down with her legs going up hill or rolled over while laying down and could not get back up, she had been down 2 hours that I knew of. She calved out a month later with a health heifer calf. I don't mind now looking back at it costing me $50 for not looking at the whole picture, at least I did not loose a cow over it, makes me go "why did I not think of that", I just figured she should be able to get up even on the slight uphill slope, taught me wrong.