The past couple days I have noticed that a few calves have had blood with their manure. They do not act sick at all but I am a little concerned about it. What could this be and how can it be treated? Can baby calves be given Sulfa boluses?
I would lean toward coccidea?
Maybe just "one of those things".
Yes, you can give calves sulfa boluses. make sure they are small and they go down all the way.
DLF-
We just went through the same thing. It was coccidiosis and if one has it, they may all get it. We treated ours with Albon. We had to make sure that they drank only the treated water for five days. It was a pain to deal with, but the end result was okay. One thing that you might want to be sure of is not to feed any hay or grain on the ground. Good luck!
How old are the calves? I have had newborns do this with no apparent health problems and be fine down the road. If they are older calves I agree with all of the post above.
The calves that have been noticed with some blood are 6 days old and 12 days old. I have seen baby calves do this before and they never seemed to have problems, but it's just that I have noticed a few more doing it this year.
It is very easy to test for coccidiosis. Just take a stool sample to your vet and he can test it and let you know. Coccidiosis can really affect your calves if left untreated. It might turn out to be nothing, but it does not cost much to test them and know for sure what you are dealing with.
Due to the life cycle of coccidiosis, calves will not break until they are at least 21 days of age. If the calves are not scouring, just blood in normal looking stools, it could be a nutritional scour.