Post by nalawoman on Jul 26, 2010 5:31:02 GMT -5
My cow Sunshine was laying down unable to get up tonight when I went out to get her to treat her mastitis.
It looked like she had been down for awhile, although the calves weren't terribly hungry.
I put her halter on her and pulled, and she seemed to try to get up but wasn't able to.
I pulled for awhile, then I covered her mouth/nostrils for a minute to try to get her up, which got her trying harder to get up but all she could seem to do was something of a cow-style army crawl.
She almost rolled over flat onto her side, but was able to regain her balance when I pushed her back up. So I pulled a bale of straw over to support her, and put a pan of water in front of her.
Her nose and ears were warm, her breath smelled normal. She was alert & bright eyed.
She has mastitis, and it has been a long saga. I have worked with her intensively for 6+ weeks now and can't seem to beat it. She has it worst in her front left quarter, and the rear left is threatening too.
I'm pretty sure she had the mastitis prior to calving...although she is a first calf heifer.
Both her front and rear left side quarters were much bigger than the right sides and I thought it was really weird and photographed it like two weeks before she calved.
I just thought she was growing lopsided, but now I know it was edema caused by the mastitis.
I bought her two months prior to calving.
It is helping to keep it milked out, so the other day I finally put her out with two calves to keep her cleaned out. I don't know what else to do! They won't nurse the worst quarter much, but they are keeping her hind quarter very well cleaned out which is what it needs.
She has been with them for less than 2 days...
A few days before this she came in limping in her left hind leg.
I bathed her foot and examined it for injuries, but there were none. I handled her whole foot and poked around on it everywhere and she did not flinch at all.
It was more like she was having trouble lifting the leg when she walked. It got a little better every day and was 95% better by this morning.
Now I am thinking that it is related to mineral imbalance & her going down tonight.
Anyway, I went into the barn to try and figure out what to do, debating whether to leave her & go all the way home (ten minutes away) to call the vet... at 10:30 p.m...
After a little while I went back out there and she was up on her feet!
She came into the barn and wolfed down her hay and let me work on her udder.
I drenched her with 4 TBS of Epsom salts and 2 TBS Dolomite with 1/4 tsp copper sulphate, and Kelp Extract. And 12 grams vitamin C...
I noticed this morning that she really wanted to eat hay and NOT her pasture.
(She is in an old hen pasture with the calves, since I have nowhere else to put her that will contain the calves.)
SO I gave her a nice big pile of hay to eat, but I'm sure she ran out of hay and grazed for awhile.
I think from reading Pat Coleby's book that she is not getting enough magnesium. Pat says in it that pasture fertilized with too many Nitrates will completely deplete magnesium.
And Chicken doo is really high in nitrogen. She has been in there for a couple of days... after day one I noticed that her milk looked really watery.
I did not return her to it tonight after I was done with her, she was busily wolfing down more hay when I left. She needs to be with the calves though, for her mastitis.
I am pretty much at my wit's end here with this cow.
I need suggestions.
I was wondering about my Dolomite. I have had it for over a year now, and so I don't remember anymore what was on the label. (I have transferred it to a more rugged container than the bag it came in) I am pretty sure that when I bought it I asked to make sure it was the right type of Dolomite to give to animals.
But It doesn't seem to dissolve, it's sort of a granular crystal....
and I am wondering if I have the right stuff.
Below is a "brief" of her mastitis saga for anyone who wants to read for another... hour or so.
I wrote this the other day to the superior udder cream people in order to maybe get some insight on which product would be most effective for her.
So, here goes:
I selected the Ex-cell 3-10 because it was Aloe with goldenseal, which I thought might be helpful to her.
I tried making something along these lines with a tiny bit of oregano oil, a few drops of lavender oil & a strong dose of tea tree oil & a bit of manuka oil (another variety of tea tree) in it for her the other day...
the goldenseal was in a glycerin extract.
My recipe irritated her udder but helped the infection.
I don't know if the irritation was caused by the glycerin, or if it was the essential oils I used. I feel pretty safe with regular tea tree oil, and I don't think there was enough lavender to be a problem.. Manuka, I think that could maybe be significant, but I didn't use terribly much of any of the essential oils.
It definitely did not have enough oregano oil to irritate her, I have used stronger in other cows with no problems.
And I have made stronger coconut oil based EO preps with no problems...
I noticed with the Aloe that it carries everything in such a way that it does not take nearly as much essential oils to be really potent, compared to the carrier oils I have used before.
So... I thought maybe your preparation would work & not irritate.
She does not have clear or watery milk.
(this has changed in the last few days, she was having clear fluid with strands of junk the other day. Basically her mastitis re-surged about 4-5 days ago; I was trying to hold off on infusing anything into the udder. The past two days it is worse than ever.)
I am still waiting for my order to arrive, in the meantime I am putting my own stuff in and it is calming down a bit but not really working as well as I'd like)
She is a first calf heifer that calved on June 9th.
She had mastitis in her front driver's side quarter...
with edema when she freshened.
The affected quarter was swollen, she had edema in all quarters, more so in the bad quarter.
(I noticed a couple of weeks prior to calving that she was getting bigger on that side sooner, and thought it odd that the one side was growing faster.)
She has the mastitis in both her front & rear quarters on the left side, although the hind quarter is not nearly so bad and responds very positively to frequent milk out.
I have not infused anything into the hind quarter, ever.
The front left teat was very hard and swollen when I milked her the first time, almost too big to fit into the teat cup of my milker.
She had salty milk, normal looking with a few small white flakes.
The Streak canal was hard and gristly feeling, although you couldn't tell at first because the teat itself was so swollen and hard.
The area above the streak canal is hardened, in order to milk her out I have to press on the udder above the teat. There is no normal milk flow, very little milk, and it's salty...
so the calf won't nurse on it.
Milking with a machine just results in a purple, hard teat.
Later on, after I got the hardening down to where I could really work the tissue properly, when I massaged there was/is a hard to describe "squeaky" feeling inside the milk chamber...
When she first freshened with the mastitis, I used your ExCell 12 (since I had just received it for another cow) ...on her with no visible results.
Then I thought "OOPS! Should have cultured first!"
I added some tea tree oil and a tad oregano to it and that may have made a difference. I can't remember anymore.
After I used up the ExCell 12, I used Today on her, no results.
Then I used Pirlimyecin, no results.
IN the meantime... she was having Naxcell shots for 8 days. No results.
I tried putting some Penicillin in the quarter, no effect.
Then I created my own essential oil concoction in coconut oil. It was too strong, and irritated the tissue inside but I thought maybe it knocked the infection back some... . Stopped using it due to the irritation.
I started using clay mud packs on her udder, that made a huge difference in the edema, pulled it out but it would return.
I did ACV drenches with Lugol's Iodine for 5 days per DC Jarvis of the book "Vermont Folk Medicine" with no apparent effect.
I have the Newman Turner books, and The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm by Julliette De Bairacli-Levy.
They both recommend fasting cows to treat mastitis, so does Paul Dettlof in his book Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals, and one other book I have suggests it too.
SO... I fasted her, and made amazing strides in her mastitis.The hardening lessened incredibly daily! I did not infuse anything into her udder during her fast, just lots of massage & stripping.
I cultured her milk during this time, after 2 weeks off of any antibiotics or infusions of any kind, and the results came back:
Animal ID: Sunshine Specimen: Milk"
Isolate Growth
Mixed Gram-positive organisms <1+
Comment:
Sunshine, Milk :No Staph. aureus.
No anaerobic bacteria recovered
They did not do any sensitivity testing, (which I did request), because the results are basically inconclusive.
I have been drenching her with lots of garlic, Aloe vera, Probios, and a variety of herbal remedies and mineral powders.
I began adding garlic/Cayenne/essential oils to her clay udder packs during the fast. Prior to the fast i was combating the edema every day,
the fast in combo with the mud packs cleared it all up completely..
Of course since I have been going to all this trouble to do all this stuff, I have been stripping her out and massaging ALOT. My hands are stiff & swollen from working on her so much for so long, I no longer have full feeling in my hands.
I separate her from her calf & bring the calf in to nurse 2x/day while I work on the bad quarter so that she will let down while I am doing it. Then I strip without the calf in between times.
The calf won't nurse her bad quarter, and it won't empty normally, otherwise I would just put them together so that the calf could keep her cleaned out.
Anyway, currently her quarter is nice and soft, with a couple areas of hardness that are fairly small...
no signs of edema, milk is still a tiny bit salty, and the streak canal and area above it is still hard... still can't empty her out normally.
Although... the streak canal is almost back to normal.
There is no more swelling in the teat surrounding the streak canal..
I have been squeezing out some thick pasty stuff in tiny amounts for 2 days now.
She is having Mastoblast and a couple of other homeopathics, now, too. And vitamins.
I tried my irritating mixture of Goldenseal in glycerine/Aloe (with tea tree oil and a couple drops lavender...) about 4 days ago.
That is the first thing I have infused so far that seemed to definitely knock the infection back...the saltiness went away for the first time in this whole ordeal... but it irritated the tissue.
I didn't infuse anything else for a few days, to let her heal, but the milk is starting to turn salty again and the hardening is creeping back in.
She isn't making much milk at all in it.
Tonight I infused a new mixture of aloe gel with goldenseal tincture (in an alcohol base this time) and just a little tea tree oil... (1 cup aloe, 6 droppersful of Goldenseal, and 10 drops tea tree oil)
I put in 20ml, then stripped it all back out right away. I am thinking that if it looks good in the morning I will leave some in for an hour or two tomorrow.
So I had ordered your stuff thinking that maybe your preparation would be something that would work and not irritate her udder. Of course, it could have been the Lavender that helped her.
It takes about 4 or more days to get an order from you once it ships, if I could get it sooner I would have held off on infusing my own creation tonight!
At this point I really don't care if I just killed off that quarter, just so there is no more infection! Aggh!
We had another cow that we tried drying off a quarter that still had infection in it... and it did not turn out very pleasant, thank you...so I don't really want to go that route. (:
I would love to hear any suggestions you may have!
Thanks! Shannon
It looked like she had been down for awhile, although the calves weren't terribly hungry.
I put her halter on her and pulled, and she seemed to try to get up but wasn't able to.
I pulled for awhile, then I covered her mouth/nostrils for a minute to try to get her up, which got her trying harder to get up but all she could seem to do was something of a cow-style army crawl.
She almost rolled over flat onto her side, but was able to regain her balance when I pushed her back up. So I pulled a bale of straw over to support her, and put a pan of water in front of her.
Her nose and ears were warm, her breath smelled normal. She was alert & bright eyed.
She has mastitis, and it has been a long saga. I have worked with her intensively for 6+ weeks now and can't seem to beat it. She has it worst in her front left quarter, and the rear left is threatening too.
I'm pretty sure she had the mastitis prior to calving...although she is a first calf heifer.
Both her front and rear left side quarters were much bigger than the right sides and I thought it was really weird and photographed it like two weeks before she calved.
I just thought she was growing lopsided, but now I know it was edema caused by the mastitis.
I bought her two months prior to calving.
It is helping to keep it milked out, so the other day I finally put her out with two calves to keep her cleaned out. I don't know what else to do! They won't nurse the worst quarter much, but they are keeping her hind quarter very well cleaned out which is what it needs.
She has been with them for less than 2 days...
A few days before this she came in limping in her left hind leg.
I bathed her foot and examined it for injuries, but there were none. I handled her whole foot and poked around on it everywhere and she did not flinch at all.
It was more like she was having trouble lifting the leg when she walked. It got a little better every day and was 95% better by this morning.
Now I am thinking that it is related to mineral imbalance & her going down tonight.
Anyway, I went into the barn to try and figure out what to do, debating whether to leave her & go all the way home (ten minutes away) to call the vet... at 10:30 p.m...
After a little while I went back out there and she was up on her feet!
She came into the barn and wolfed down her hay and let me work on her udder.
I drenched her with 4 TBS of Epsom salts and 2 TBS Dolomite with 1/4 tsp copper sulphate, and Kelp Extract. And 12 grams vitamin C...
I noticed this morning that she really wanted to eat hay and NOT her pasture.
(She is in an old hen pasture with the calves, since I have nowhere else to put her that will contain the calves.)
SO I gave her a nice big pile of hay to eat, but I'm sure she ran out of hay and grazed for awhile.
I think from reading Pat Coleby's book that she is not getting enough magnesium. Pat says in it that pasture fertilized with too many Nitrates will completely deplete magnesium.
And Chicken doo is really high in nitrogen. She has been in there for a couple of days... after day one I noticed that her milk looked really watery.
I did not return her to it tonight after I was done with her, she was busily wolfing down more hay when I left. She needs to be with the calves though, for her mastitis.
I am pretty much at my wit's end here with this cow.
I need suggestions.
I was wondering about my Dolomite. I have had it for over a year now, and so I don't remember anymore what was on the label. (I have transferred it to a more rugged container than the bag it came in) I am pretty sure that when I bought it I asked to make sure it was the right type of Dolomite to give to animals.
But It doesn't seem to dissolve, it's sort of a granular crystal....
and I am wondering if I have the right stuff.
Below is a "brief" of her mastitis saga for anyone who wants to read for another... hour or so.
I wrote this the other day to the superior udder cream people in order to maybe get some insight on which product would be most effective for her.
So, here goes:
I selected the Ex-cell 3-10 because it was Aloe with goldenseal, which I thought might be helpful to her.
I tried making something along these lines with a tiny bit of oregano oil, a few drops of lavender oil & a strong dose of tea tree oil & a bit of manuka oil (another variety of tea tree) in it for her the other day...
the goldenseal was in a glycerin extract.
My recipe irritated her udder but helped the infection.
I don't know if the irritation was caused by the glycerin, or if it was the essential oils I used. I feel pretty safe with regular tea tree oil, and I don't think there was enough lavender to be a problem.. Manuka, I think that could maybe be significant, but I didn't use terribly much of any of the essential oils.
It definitely did not have enough oregano oil to irritate her, I have used stronger in other cows with no problems.
And I have made stronger coconut oil based EO preps with no problems...
I noticed with the Aloe that it carries everything in such a way that it does not take nearly as much essential oils to be really potent, compared to the carrier oils I have used before.
So... I thought maybe your preparation would work & not irritate.
She does not have clear or watery milk.
(this has changed in the last few days, she was having clear fluid with strands of junk the other day. Basically her mastitis re-surged about 4-5 days ago; I was trying to hold off on infusing anything into the udder. The past two days it is worse than ever.)
I am still waiting for my order to arrive, in the meantime I am putting my own stuff in and it is calming down a bit but not really working as well as I'd like)
She is a first calf heifer that calved on June 9th.
She had mastitis in her front driver's side quarter...
with edema when she freshened.
The affected quarter was swollen, she had edema in all quarters, more so in the bad quarter.
(I noticed a couple of weeks prior to calving that she was getting bigger on that side sooner, and thought it odd that the one side was growing faster.)
She has the mastitis in both her front & rear quarters on the left side, although the hind quarter is not nearly so bad and responds very positively to frequent milk out.
I have not infused anything into the hind quarter, ever.
The front left teat was very hard and swollen when I milked her the first time, almost too big to fit into the teat cup of my milker.
She had salty milk, normal looking with a few small white flakes.
The Streak canal was hard and gristly feeling, although you couldn't tell at first because the teat itself was so swollen and hard.
The area above the streak canal is hardened, in order to milk her out I have to press on the udder above the teat. There is no normal milk flow, very little milk, and it's salty...
so the calf won't nurse on it.
Milking with a machine just results in a purple, hard teat.
Later on, after I got the hardening down to where I could really work the tissue properly, when I massaged there was/is a hard to describe "squeaky" feeling inside the milk chamber...
When she first freshened with the mastitis, I used your ExCell 12 (since I had just received it for another cow) ...on her with no visible results.
Then I thought "OOPS! Should have cultured first!"
I added some tea tree oil and a tad oregano to it and that may have made a difference. I can't remember anymore.
After I used up the ExCell 12, I used Today on her, no results.
Then I used Pirlimyecin, no results.
IN the meantime... she was having Naxcell shots for 8 days. No results.
I tried putting some Penicillin in the quarter, no effect.
Then I created my own essential oil concoction in coconut oil. It was too strong, and irritated the tissue inside but I thought maybe it knocked the infection back some... . Stopped using it due to the irritation.
I started using clay mud packs on her udder, that made a huge difference in the edema, pulled it out but it would return.
I did ACV drenches with Lugol's Iodine for 5 days per DC Jarvis of the book "Vermont Folk Medicine" with no apparent effect.
I have the Newman Turner books, and The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm by Julliette De Bairacli-Levy.
They both recommend fasting cows to treat mastitis, so does Paul Dettlof in his book Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals, and one other book I have suggests it too.
SO... I fasted her, and made amazing strides in her mastitis.The hardening lessened incredibly daily! I did not infuse anything into her udder during her fast, just lots of massage & stripping.
I cultured her milk during this time, after 2 weeks off of any antibiotics or infusions of any kind, and the results came back:
Animal ID: Sunshine Specimen: Milk"
Isolate Growth
Mixed Gram-positive organisms <1+
Comment:
Sunshine, Milk :No Staph. aureus.
No anaerobic bacteria recovered
They did not do any sensitivity testing, (which I did request), because the results are basically inconclusive.
I have been drenching her with lots of garlic, Aloe vera, Probios, and a variety of herbal remedies and mineral powders.
I began adding garlic/Cayenne/essential oils to her clay udder packs during the fast. Prior to the fast i was combating the edema every day,
the fast in combo with the mud packs cleared it all up completely..
Of course since I have been going to all this trouble to do all this stuff, I have been stripping her out and massaging ALOT. My hands are stiff & swollen from working on her so much for so long, I no longer have full feeling in my hands.
I separate her from her calf & bring the calf in to nurse 2x/day while I work on the bad quarter so that she will let down while I am doing it. Then I strip without the calf in between times.
The calf won't nurse her bad quarter, and it won't empty normally, otherwise I would just put them together so that the calf could keep her cleaned out.
Anyway, currently her quarter is nice and soft, with a couple areas of hardness that are fairly small...
no signs of edema, milk is still a tiny bit salty, and the streak canal and area above it is still hard... still can't empty her out normally.
Although... the streak canal is almost back to normal.
There is no more swelling in the teat surrounding the streak canal..
I have been squeezing out some thick pasty stuff in tiny amounts for 2 days now.
She is having Mastoblast and a couple of other homeopathics, now, too. And vitamins.
I tried my irritating mixture of Goldenseal in glycerine/Aloe (with tea tree oil and a couple drops lavender...) about 4 days ago.
That is the first thing I have infused so far that seemed to definitely knock the infection back...the saltiness went away for the first time in this whole ordeal... but it irritated the tissue.
I didn't infuse anything else for a few days, to let her heal, but the milk is starting to turn salty again and the hardening is creeping back in.
She isn't making much milk at all in it.
Tonight I infused a new mixture of aloe gel with goldenseal tincture (in an alcohol base this time) and just a little tea tree oil... (1 cup aloe, 6 droppersful of Goldenseal, and 10 drops tea tree oil)
I put in 20ml, then stripped it all back out right away. I am thinking that if it looks good in the morning I will leave some in for an hour or two tomorrow.
So I had ordered your stuff thinking that maybe your preparation would be something that would work and not irritate her udder. Of course, it could have been the Lavender that helped her.
It takes about 4 or more days to get an order from you once it ships, if I could get it sooner I would have held off on infusing my own creation tonight!
At this point I really don't care if I just killed off that quarter, just so there is no more infection! Aggh!
We had another cow that we tried drying off a quarter that still had infection in it... and it did not turn out very pleasant, thank you...so I don't really want to go that route. (:
I would love to hear any suggestions you may have!
Thanks! Shannon