B-8 coliform mastitis

[freetodream]

Hi all, Our cow winda that just calved on the 13th apparently has coliform mastitis. She's been treated for 4 days for staph mastitis with pirsue but came in this morning lethargic with a huge back quarter. She was NOT like this last night she milked out fine and ate great but was not eating this morning and had a temp of 105.1! I gave 10cc banamine and took her to the vet. He was a waste of time pretty much and told me that besides the banamine 1x/day and milking out the quarter frequently there wasn't much to do. Apparently Pirsue is not effective for gram negative stuff like coliform. He told me that we'd probably lose the quarter and maybe the cow and there wasn't much to do. AAAARGH! Ok that's not acceptable to me she's a family member and while her fever was amazing this morning it was normal after Banamine and she's sorta picking at her hay and looks as though she fells a bit better. Her milk is not bloody at all and isn't serum either it looks like yellow colostrum kinda and has some strings in it. I read up and also gave her 20cc of excenel this afternoon as some of the research I read says that's helpful to treat/prevent sepsis.
Anyway I"m lost I'm not sure what else to do for her or what to expect? She's in a stall warm and dry and is still nursing her heifer calf but we were milking twice a day in addition and now 5-6 times/day on that quarter. She's drinking some water and she drank about 2.5gal of mollasses water this morning and I'm going to see if she'll drink some more in a minute. Any help would be really great. I'm not above taking her to a different vet if you all feel it's warranted. There's a great dairy vet not too far from us but there is a blizzard warning tonight and all of tommorow so traveling is treacherous. Thanks you guys
Kjersti

[suzorse]

I would see if you could see the vet , there have been a few cows on here with that ,she will probabley sluff that quarter, wish I had better news for you Suzanne

[freetodream]

We saw the vet this afternoon but that's whatt I was saying is that he basically blew me off. He's normally very good I'm not sure what his deal today was. I'll deal with losing the quarter just need to save my cow I just need to know what to expect and if there's other supportive care she needs
Kjersti

[suzorse]

here is one link to a bad case 19 pgs long
familycow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=emergency&action=display&thread=29179
hope this helps in some way Suzanne
there are a lot of mastitis links hope you can find something to help
familycow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mastits&field=subject&order=asc&page=1

[Claire]

My cow had coliform mastitis in both rear quarters at the end of summer. The first 24 hours were the worst, she went down and could barely walk, didn't eat much of anything, etc. The vet gave her Excenel and Banamine and I kept her in a stall for 24 hours so she wouldn't walk around and inflame the quarter more. Offered her the best hay, her daily grain, and warm water with molasses (only way I got her to drink). We did 3 doses of Cefa-Lax (Today, basically) teat infusions starting the morning after she got sick and a 2nd dose of Excenel 2 days later. I stripped the infected quarters 5x a day and massage everything I could get out of them, progressing from brown serum to yellowish snot to milk after nearly 2 weeks. Both quarters were saved. She also came down with pneumonia that we ended up treating with Nu-Flor and had to dump the milk for 3 weeks, but it was worth it to save her.

[freetodream]

Claire that's great about your cow being ok and keeping the quarters too. It gives me some hope instead of the worst case scenario. Do you think the pneumonia was related to the mastitis or maybe just happened because she was fighting off mastitis first and weakened her immune system?
Winda is doing much better this morning so I am cautiously optimistic. This can probably be moved from the 911 area. her temp was still normal even before the banamine she got again this morning and she's eating like normal (which is everything).
She only raised a leg at me a couple times stripping that quarter this morning and it's literally half the size it was yesterday and not tight. It still has hard places but greatly improved. It's hard to tell all the way because she had a wicked case of udder edema when she calved thats only slowly been going down. I'm not sure if that quarter will come back and milk because I'm only getting about a cup or two each time I strip it out. The milk is a little ore serumy than yesterday and with more strings/snot like stuff but I assume it's good to get that out. It's too bad the calf refuses to nurse that quarter it'd be so much easier if she would but I guess she must think it tastes funny or something; that and she's lazy almost always nurses the front teats instead of the rears.

So should I expect based on the amount that I'm getting stripping her out that the quarter is pretty much gone at least for this lactation or could it come back and recover production after the infection is gone? If the quarter comes back do I just wait until the cmt is clear to use the milk from it instead of dumping it separately?

Does dry treating prevent this in a fresh cow. We didn't dry treat winda because all her quarters were normal at dry off but if there's a way to prevent this I'm listening

I appreciate the help we've only ever dealt with chronic staph mastitis so i know alot about that just not about serious stuff like this coliform mastitis with a 105 degree fever.
Kjersti

[Claire]

My cow got sick 13 months into her lactation, coliform mastitis can happen at any point, really.

After about 3-4 weeks my cow was back to the same level of production that she had before her illness. The infection in the udder cleared out in about a week, but it took 2-3x as long to get the tissue feeling normal and the milk back to milk, instead of varying shades and thicknesses of yellowish stuff. I would keep the milk once it's back to looking like normal milk.

I think the pneumonia was due to her immune system being so overwhelmed with the mastitis and the fact she went down out in the middle of the treeless pasture on one of the hottest days of the summer and I didn't find her until I came home from work, so she may have been lying out there for hours.

[freetodream]

Winda is doing great and I think we have this licked Her quarter is back to normal and the milk looks like milk and it's milking about a quart twice a day and seems to be increasing so we might even get the quarter back. It's amazing how fast they can go downhill and then bounce back to normal sometimes. thanks for all the help and suggestions though.
Kjersti