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[farmerjan]

Yes, misfit is right.... the terms are used interchangeably, but laminitis can be controlled if caught early and steps taken. It is never "cured"... Founder is basically a death sentence. But for most cases, when it is caught it is already founder, it is pretty much too late for the animal to still be productive, or in the case of horses, to be able to be ridden. Alot of dairy cattle will get laminitis if the feed ration is too "hot" and it is exacerbated by being on concrete... I am as bad as most by using the terms interchangeably.... sadly, when it happens at such an early age as that calf seems to have happened, he will be subject to problems for the rest of his life. And especially if the person taking care of him is not aware enough to know how to lessen the effects through proper feed. I have only seen hooves that bad on a cow once before, and it was older than this calf. Most often in cattle it is seen on one foot more than on both and usually is too much growth on one of the toes... needing constant trimming and being more susceptible to sore feet, and other problems. Ripples in the hoof/toe is common in cattle that have had previous problems....

 

[Ridgetop]

So why would this young calf get laminitis so quickly after purchase? She was definitely overfeeding the calf when she started tubing it (when she said the milk was bubbling back out of the mouth around the tube!) and also putting it on too a rich sheep replacer was bad. But if the breeders were bottle feeding lamb replacer it should have been used to the richer formula, right? But remember she said that the calf didn't want to stand up and just lay down all the time? That could have been the laminitis already affecting the hooves and causing it pain. Not to mention when she said she thought he was "cudding" (but had not been eating anything) he was possibly grinding his teeth in pain like they do. No use worrying about it now.

Thanks to misfitmorgan and farmerjan for the good explanation of the difference between laminitis and founder. I thought they were the same thing too.

 

[misfitmorgan]

So why would this young calf get laminitis so quickly after purchase? She was definitely overfeeding the calf when she started tubing it (when she said the milk was bubbling back out of the mouth around the tube!) and also putting it on too a rich sheep replacer was bad. But if the breeders were bottle feeding lamb replacer it should have been used to the richer formula, right? But remember she said that the calf didn't want to stand up and just lay down all the time? That could have been the laminitis already affecting the hooves and causing it pain. Not to mention when she said she thought he was "cudding" (but had not been eating anything) he was possibly grinding his teeth in pain like they do. No use worrying about it now.

Thanks to misfitmorgan and farmerjan for the good explanation of the difference between laminitis and founder. I thought they were the same thing too.

The calf could have arrived with the beginnings of laminitis, as with most prey animals they won't show any/many signs until it gets pretty bad from what my research says. It's also possible that they were using lamb replacer and mixing down the strength, or that the calf was with its mom until it got older and was trained to a bottle. They were feeding the calf a smaller amount of the milk replacer on a daily basis as well, even if the calf was used to the richer milk feeding it double or more and literally force feeding it with a tube it wouldnt have mattered. As I mentioned awhile back a normal size bottle calf is only fed 4 quarts of milk replacer a day, I wouldnt think a mini would need as much but I literally have zero experience with minis so really not sure there. Hopefully the calf is recovering and she learned what not to do with any future calves. Even with people who have been raising calves for 30yrs still lose 3% on a herd that is dam raised and more on calves that are bottle raised, calves are difficult. You can do everything "right" and they can still die.

 

[Ridgetop]

Bottle calves can be tricky. We only lost 2 in 12 calves raised to selling age at 2-3 months. But one summer there was an outbreak of E. coli and we lost two sets of 3 calves one after the other. I usually had good results with calves, as soon as they would stop nursing I cut their milk with water, gave paste electrolytes and probiotics which pulled them through. Never had to tube any calves. But that summer after losing 2 sets of calves back to back, we stopped bringing in calves, bleached the area, and the calf hutches. The following years no problem with raising our newborn Holstein calves again.

We never had any problems with hooves. We used straight unpasteurized goats milk, no calf replacer, 2 quarts am, 2 quarts pm, with leftover goat hay. The Fair veal calves were a little trickier since we had to keep them on increasing amounts of milk, no hay or grain. At 3 months they were drinking up to 3 gallons a day in calf bottles, never used buckets.