At a recent call to a farm with a scoury cow, I had a flashback moment recalling a similar call to the same farm 12 years ago and a similar looking scoury cow.
At that time, we ruled out nutritional, parasitic and common bacterial causes and proceeded with a blood and subsequent dung sample testing for Johne’s disease.
Unfortunately both were positive.
The farm stopped its replacement policy of buying in-calf heifers from a variety of different herds.
It implemented the Johne’s disease control programme that was being run by AHI.
An estimated timeline of 10 years was given for the programme to be effective. Thirty percent of the animals tested positive on blood / milk in the first year of the programme and these were bred to beef animals.
The older animals consistently testing negatively were targeted for breeding the replacement heifers.
The heifer calves were snatched as they calved and received their own mother’s colostrum and subsequently transitioned onto transformula/replacement milk formula as a source of feed.
The advice around forage and grazing was also implemented.
The percentage of the herd testing positive gradually decreased and eventually 10 years after the initial diagnosis, no animal showed a reaction on the annual screening.
Thankfully, this cow’s source of scour was parasitic and thus involved far less follow up and no herd health procedural changes.
While the presence of clinical Johne’s has dramatically decreased on the farm, the procedures around calf and colostrum management have remained and have led to a significant reduction in health challenges to calves and a boost in animal performance.
Your local vet is an excellent resource if you have any scoury herd health queries.
Pat Devine, XLVets
Lismore Vets, Co Waterford
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