Bull died all of a sudden

[HORSE CRAZY1]

It has been on my mind for a while.

My grandfather had a very healthy bull. He had access to a large pasture and twenty five head of cows. Then all of a sudden he showed signs of pnumonia. He wouldn't eat or drink. The vet gave him a shot and he still kept getting skinnier. He died one day. Someone in our area also had the same problem.

I don't want this to happen again,so does anyone have any idea to what it could have been?

 

[bonbean01]

I don't know...but my Dad had cattle, and any with pneumonia were put up in a stall and given antibiotic shots for at least 5 to 7 days and all survived. Maybe he didn't get the shots long enough?

 

[HORSE CRAZY1]

He had three rounds of shots,but none of the other cattle got sick,just the bull. Same with the other person.

 

[bonbean01]

Did you have sheep with the bull? A friend passed this on to me and I'm sharing it with you in case this is what happened to your bull...if not...something we can all learn about.
....Its rare and seems to be bulls but they can pick up a form of herpes from sheep - sheep are not troubled in the slightest by it and you wouldn't even know and most sheep carry the virus.
A very high % of cattle are totally immune to it but the odd one can get the virus and it seems to be bulls. There is no cure for cattle and death is guaranteed ...

 

[secuono]

Aaaaand, what is this 'virus'?

 

[WildRoseBeef]

What were the shots that were given? LA200? Nuflor?

Some how I think that the pneumonia was merely a symptom of something more problematic, and with the lack of response to the shots given (antibiotics?), the disease that the bull had could have been viral or a different strain of bacteria that the therapeutic antibiotics couldn't have an affect on. And of course when I hear "pneumonia" I'm thinking of other diseases like shipping fever, IBR (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis) and bovine respiratory disease complex...

Did this bull get sick on spring pasture? How old was he? What other symptoms do you remember he exhibited along with this disease? And, did you get a necropsy done on him after he died?

 

[bonbean01]

Secouno, this is just one link about it.

http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue28/mcf.html

 

[AshleyFishy]

Did the vet check for hardware disease? I've seen it act like pneumonia when it is near the heart.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Hardware...now THAT would be a very likely cause for both the pneumonia symptoms and the sudden loss of interest in eating or drinking coupled with loss of weight. The pain from the puncture in the rumen or reticulum and the slow release of gastro-intestinal fluid into the abdominal cavity would make any animal stop eating.

If it is Hardware (good call, Ashley!!), then I would make a proactive effort in anything possible to pick up any piece of metal or nail or wire in your pasture as possible (whenever you get the opportunity to) and put a magnet in your older cattle to minimize the chance of your animals getting hardware disease. Cattle will and can accidentally consume foreign objects as they graze and when they puncture the stomach wall and migrate towards the heart, it will kill your animal, no matter how perfectly healthy and sound they are. They can also migrate from the reticulo-rumen wall to the outside of the stomach where surgery is needed to get it out and fix the animal up.

Magnets won't hurt the animals, and they stay in their stomachs for the rest of their lives. Just use a bolus gun to shoot it down their throats is all that's needed. You will need to restrain them to have this done, no doubt just like with any other processing job--dehorning, vaccinating, preg-checking, etc.

 

[HORSE CRAZY1]

There were no sheep in with the bull,nor were there any within sevral miles.

As suggested above,the only possible thing it could have been (besides a viris) could be a foriegn object in the stomch.