coccidiosis?

[blackjack]

...cowman is right ...it is not a problem if your on top of it... i also use sulfa methazine but in the long lasting pill form ... isolate from the rest...

[cowman]

And there is the whole trick to be successful in the cattle business....you have to be on top of it! The old saying "The eye of the farmer fattens the cow" is very true?
When we bought the half section 12 miles from home I suspected it could cause problems but have managed to get out there practically every day or two to check up on them(they're home now). Sometimes it requires a lot of extra effort when we are busy in the oil patch!
My neighbor regularily sends 25 cows up north to a community pasture. This year he got all his calves back but the year before he only got 22! The pasture rider told him it was probably bears that got these calves? I said " Well maybe the pasture rider was the bear"!
I do believe nobody can look out for your cattle as well as you can?

[kato]

Coccidiosis is something we've dealt with a lot in the past. One thing we've learned is that if you have one or two showing symptoms, it's likely that they've all got some level of coccidia in their systems.

Sulfa works pretty well, but long term can be hard on the kidneys, so you have to watch it, especially if the calf is dehydrated. The very best thing to use is Amprol. You can put it in creep feed, or in drinking water.

Years ago we used to have lots of trouble in our calves when we weaned them, and found that if we just bit the bullet, and did five days of medicated water it cleaned them up before it got out of hand, and as a bonus, seemed to eliminate poor doers from the herd.

As time went by, I think the level of infection in the yard has been lowered a lot. Now our biggest problem is in the spring, in the one to three month old calves. We use medicated creep feed, but unfortunately they don't all eat it, so there's usually several that need to be done individually.

Untreated, this can turn into what they call nervous coccidiosis. That's when it gets into the nervous system and causes convulsions. Bottom line is that it's something that will not go away on it's own.

[cowman]

Well for spot treating I like sulpha methazine because it is a one shot deal?
We used to get a couple of cases a year in calves...usually when the ground started to thaw. One winter we fed a few pounds of grain with rumensin in it and that was the end of any coccidiosis problems in the calves. Seemed to break the cycle or something?