Have you ever seen this?

I'm no city girl but I was caught off guard and did a lot of "Ew ew ew-ing" when I was cleaing up a bull for a sale and his whole tail switch fell off!!

Had a steer we got in from South Dakota last spring that was a tad frost bitten and went to clean his tail and his did the same thing. All it is that the skin was frost bitten and killed just hadn't fallen off.

Make a hairpiece out if it and clip it on for shows.

I have seen this on a few occasions but I am not sure if it is caused by freezing or something else. I found one like this a few weeks ago and after going through the cows I finally found the one that last her switch. She seemed no worse for this happening and her tail looks perfectly healed.

Several things can cause it to happen, another cow stepped on its tail and when it stood up, snap. Frostbite, or even a tick bite can cause it.

Larissa, ergot in feed grains can cause switches to fall off. It restricts the blood flow to the extremities.  It can also cause ears and feet to fall off too.  It's nasty.  Ergot has been a huge issue in western Canada the last couple of years with all of the moisture.

I've seen this before. I assumed the tail had been stepped on (because it was spring/summer) or it was due to a mite of some kind.

We assumed it had been from frost bite but it sounds like it could have happened for a number of different reasons. The thing that I do know is that I really wish that I would have kept the tail to use on short-tailed show cattle in the future!

Cowboy_nyk, I did some research on ergot and thankfully I don't think that it was caused by bad feed because sone of the other bulls in his pen had similar symptoms.