How to treat infected navels and prevent them (Cattle - Beef)

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We are a small calf raising operation. We are having a hard time with herniated navels in our holstien bull calves. Sometimes up to 50% we clip them and dip them with iodine as new arrivals. There doesn't seem to be and infection Pennicillin has no effect. A hand full of intestine "bloops" through the hole and stays there.You can push it back trough the hole but it just comes back out again. This doesn't seem to irritate the calf as if there is an infection and doesn't show up on the calf till they are a week old. The normal hole in the flesh under the skin just doesn't seem to close up. It stays about the size of 2 fingers.About 25% of these out grow it at about 450 lbsAgain Antibiotics dseem to have any effect .Any advice or recomendation would be helpful.Thank you

-- Annette Manroe (nettieandretti@hotmail.com), September 24, 2001

Answers

Response to How to treat infected navels and prevent them

In goats this would be hereditary. Not an infection. Believe me you know when you have navel ill, the navel area smells like rotting flesh, the animal has a very high fever and usually swollen joints. They die from this very quickly. We treat with Naxcel. We see very few umbilical hernia's, and are mattress sutured by the vet. Though a really nice doe/cow may be kept, certainly wouldn't use a buck/bull that carried this. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 25, 2001.

Response to How to treat infected navels and prevent them

If you have young calfs together without cows to nurse on they will use each others ears and navels, this can cause infection. If this is what is happening my girlfriend squirts bitters on them and then they don't use each other to nurse on.

-- Teresa (c3ranch@socket.net), September 25, 2001.

Response to How to treat infected navels and prevent them

Annette, I have been a dairy farmer my whole life and I've never seen one of these. It sounds like you are buying them and bringing them in to raise. Do these animals all come from the same farm? If so, I would strongly suggest there is a hereditary problem going on. At the very least it a birth defect, even if not inherited. If these calves don't die from this, and it sounds like they aren't, I would at least ask the vet the next time you have one come in the yard what they think could be causing it. As far as dipping the navels, at a week old I don't think there's going to be much benefit from it, but I suppose it doesn't hurt, either. Hope you find a reason for it--it sounds pretty discouraging to work with animals with this.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), September 25, 2001.

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