Animal Grooming Behaviour May Indicate Disease Presence.
Sept 28, 2014 10:56:54 GMT -5
milkmaid likes this
Post by blaithin on Sept 28, 2014 10:56:54 GMT -5
One of the guys at work brought this news paper clipping in and I found it quite interesting. To be fair at first I had images of sick animals not having the energy to groom other animals or healthy animals grooming ill animals, etc. etc. Wasn't quite on line with visiting grooming stations. Still interesting none the less.
From the Western Producer on Sept. 18, 2014
www.producer.com/2014/09/animal-grooming-behaviour-may-indicate-disease-presence/
Selecting and treating sick calves early in the disease process is one of the challenges when dealing with respiratory disease in weaned calves.
Many of the early signs of depression that mark the beginning of the disease process are subtle. This re-quires well trained pen checkers who understand the normal behaviour patterns of cattle and have keen powers of observation.
These subtle signs of depression are often manifested by calves in their head and ear carriage, dullness in the eyes, a lack of stretching when they stand and sometimes in the way that the calves move in the pen.
The best pen riders can identify the sick calves that require treatment early in the disease process when they have the best chance of responding to therapy.
Good pen riders are also adept at low stress animal handling and move through the pens with a minimum of disturbance.
Selected animals are checked and those with a fever are diagnosed either with bovine respiratory disease or “undifferentiated fever.”
Antibiotics are usually administered, and animals that were selected early in the disease process are likely to respond and recover.
The most common reason for failure to respond to therapy is that the animal has not been identified early enough and may have more advanced lung pathology that cannot be reversed.
Learning how to be a good at identifying these sick calves is a true art, and I am always amazed by the skills of the best pen riders at many large feedlots.
However, finding these skilled people is becoming more difficult, and sometimes it just isn’t possible to hire enough of them.
For smaller operations, the re-sponsibility may fall to the owner-manager to check sick cattle as part of an already busy day, and it may not always get the attention it deserves.
Research is ongoing to try to im-prove the way we detect calves with respiratory disease.
Even good pen riders often get to check pens only once or twice a day and may not always find all of the animals that require treatment.
A variety of alternative approaches have been attempted to identify sick cattle:
Radio frequency identification tags and sensors can be used to identify when cattle are at the bunk or when they are drinking.
Acclerometers and pedometers can record when cattle are lying down or how far they are walking.
Special blood tests for signs of inflammation have been used on cattle as they enter the feedlot to try to identify sick calves. However, none of these methods have been shown to be accurate enough to replace the pen rider.
Research at the University of California, Davis shows interesting re-sults, although the studies are small and preliminary.
Dr. Rachel Toaff-Rosenstein presented this research at the Beef Cattle Welfare Symposium at Iowa State University this summer.
The researchers wondered if sick cattle might display other changes in behaviour, and they focused specifically on grooming behaviour.
They installed grooming brushes in each pen and recorded not only feeding behaviour but how often calves used the grooming brushes. Grooming brushes are quite common in dairy farms, and cows will frequently rub against them to scratch themselves.
The researchers were able to demonstrate a dramatic decrease in grooming behaviour in calves once they became sick with respiratory disease.
Calves with the most severe lung lesions spent the least amount of time near the grooming brushes.
This research is interesting, but we still have a long way to go.
At some point, researchers may identify a blood test or computerized technology that can identify sick calves early in the disease process, but in the meantime we will still have to rely on pen checking and the skills of the stockperson to identify sick calves for treatment.
John Campbell is head of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
From the Western Producer on Sept. 18, 2014
www.producer.com/2014/09/animal-grooming-behaviour-may-indicate-disease-presence/
Selecting and treating sick calves early in the disease process is one of the challenges when dealing with respiratory disease in weaned calves.
Many of the early signs of depression that mark the beginning of the disease process are subtle. This re-quires well trained pen checkers who understand the normal behaviour patterns of cattle and have keen powers of observation.
These subtle signs of depression are often manifested by calves in their head and ear carriage, dullness in the eyes, a lack of stretching when they stand and sometimes in the way that the calves move in the pen.
The best pen riders can identify the sick calves that require treatment early in the disease process when they have the best chance of responding to therapy.
Good pen riders are also adept at low stress animal handling and move through the pens with a minimum of disturbance.
Selected animals are checked and those with a fever are diagnosed either with bovine respiratory disease or “undifferentiated fever.”
Antibiotics are usually administered, and animals that were selected early in the disease process are likely to respond and recover.
The most common reason for failure to respond to therapy is that the animal has not been identified early enough and may have more advanced lung pathology that cannot be reversed.
Learning how to be a good at identifying these sick calves is a true art, and I am always amazed by the skills of the best pen riders at many large feedlots.
However, finding these skilled people is becoming more difficult, and sometimes it just isn’t possible to hire enough of them.
For smaller operations, the re-sponsibility may fall to the owner-manager to check sick cattle as part of an already busy day, and it may not always get the attention it deserves.
Research is ongoing to try to im-prove the way we detect calves with respiratory disease.
Even good pen riders often get to check pens only once or twice a day and may not always find all of the animals that require treatment.
A variety of alternative approaches have been attempted to identify sick cattle:
Radio frequency identification tags and sensors can be used to identify when cattle are at the bunk or when they are drinking.
Acclerometers and pedometers can record when cattle are lying down or how far they are walking.
Special blood tests for signs of inflammation have been used on cattle as they enter the feedlot to try to identify sick calves. However, none of these methods have been shown to be accurate enough to replace the pen rider.
Research at the University of California, Davis shows interesting re-sults, although the studies are small and preliminary.
Dr. Rachel Toaff-Rosenstein presented this research at the Beef Cattle Welfare Symposium at Iowa State University this summer.
The researchers wondered if sick cattle might display other changes in behaviour, and they focused specifically on grooming behaviour.
They installed grooming brushes in each pen and recorded not only feeding behaviour but how often calves used the grooming brushes. Grooming brushes are quite common in dairy farms, and cows will frequently rub against them to scratch themselves.
The researchers were able to demonstrate a dramatic decrease in grooming behaviour in calves once they became sick with respiratory disease.
Calves with the most severe lung lesions spent the least amount of time near the grooming brushes.
This research is interesting, but we still have a long way to go.
At some point, researchers may identify a blood test or computerized technology that can identify sick calves early in the disease process, but in the meantime we will still have to rely on pen checking and the skills of the stockperson to identify sick calves for treatment.
John Campbell is head of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine.