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Cow suddenly died

J

jacksonduper

Member
I had a six year old cow suddenly die. She had been eating And drinking good and looked good. She was on pasture and was getting good hay and had access to minerals. What could of caused this? She was not nnalert because I sell natural meat. I don't want to het into a debate about vaccinating etc. I grew up on a conventional dairy so I have been down that road. I had had success selling natural meat so I only treat when needed. This cow was with my small herd of Scottish highlands and I don't want anymore problems so I thought I would look for some input.

Thanks in advance
Joe
 
Can be many things. Might pay to have a vet take a look and take some samples for lab work.
Like people, sometimes they just die.
 
I had a cow do the same thing last year, eating and drinking normal just before dark she was just fine,in the morning she was dead,vet said it was a heart attack!
 
When one dies like this,it kind of knocks you backwards. Like one of the other guys who responded about his having a heart attack, not all cattle which die are sick, like people, this just happens. When I was young and just starting I had one to die like this. I was complaining or whinng to my grandpa and this is what he said....If you have cattle some of them are going to die, if you don't have any, none of your cows will die. It sure was a lot easier to take when one died after I had been raising them for 40 years, than when I first began. Good Luck to all you young farmers....We are depending on y'all!!!!!
 
I think if you really want to know then have the Vet perform an autopsy.
Some times they just kark it for no obvious reason,

I am interested in the" natural meat", I think you may mean.. chemical free.
 
Joe,

I don't know if you have anything like this around your place, but here in Nashville, TN we have a state run Ag Center that does necropsies for free.

I've hauled cows and calves to them over the years and although I haven't found anything that I should specifically be doing to keep more cows from dying, at least I knew that I wasn't doing something wrong.

You might want to access your state Department of Agriculture to see if there's something like that near you.

Sorry for the loss. I know exactly how it feels.

Tom in TN
 
As others have said, could be any number of reasons.

I've seen it happen with "hardware disease" unexpected, but that not so sudden. Would guess something heart related if it was very sudden.

But - where you don't vaccinate, (and I'm not saying that's good or bad) for the safety of the rest of your herd, you really should treat the situation as if it was something viral, just to be safe.

I'd definitely call in a vet. I would think they could at least rule out bacteria/viruses for you. I don't think they'd need to do an extensive autopsy.

You don't really need to know for sure what it was, just that it wasn't something communicable.

Meanwhile, I'd personally try to keep the others away from where this cow was, if at all possible. Bleach your waterers, food troughs, hay feeders, etc. Don't know for sure it'd even do any good if it WERE something viral - but can't hurt. And REALLY more of a question for a vet anyways.

If there's anything else you need a vet for, would be a good time to combine it all into one visit.
 
Possibly starved to death. I don't know where you are at but if you had an abnormal weather year, you're hay might not be as good of quality as you think. And pasture this time of year usually has little or no nutritional value. The cow might look fine, but if you cut her open and find a mucous like slime just under the skin and no fat that would tell you her body was trying to convert muscle tissue to energy, dead cow.
 
yeah - i was thinking that too.

I don't know where you are - but there are a lot of plants that turn poisonous when they're damaged by frost.

If your weather is as weird as ours is right now in new england, it might be possible this late in the year for something to be growing and die off from a frost.

Look around for anything black.

But again - REALLY something you should at least talk to a vet about. Otherwise you're just guessing, and possibly putting the rest of your herd at risk.
 
BlackLeg, We lost 3 cows a few years back, started using the 7 strain nnalert instead of the 5 strain, have not lost any since. The bacteria which cause this are naturally occuring and live in the soil. I Vaccinate all of my cattle every year.
 
shipping fever? any recent additions to herd or new cattle upwind or up stream from your herd?
 
Lots of causes....neighbor told me, when I started farming from scratch here, 40 years ago....on April 1, (Yeah, April Fools Day) ....the only thing you have with cattle, is the hide! Yes, with the dairy cows for 30 years, I remember one bellaring, dying in her stall, within a minute. Vet said heart attack.
 
I guess I wouldn't worry too much about one. Like was said, sometimes they just die. But if you loose another I'd sure have her posted (postmortem exam) and find out what's going on.
 
We had one many years ago. We turned some cows out onto a pasture, they ran around like crazy ( as they do! ) and one of the fittest and healthiest looking cows you could ever imagine just keeled over and died. Vet said "heart attack".
 
Got any plastic bags floating around your pasture? Sure fire killer.

Sometimes certain types of pastures (Fescue) can do it. Could be nitrate poisioning which usually accompanies fresh pasture, too much of it, too much fertilizer, no dry (hay) to balance out the diet, could be the hole as mentioned, can't comment on the other things mentioned....never had one just die on me. Had a blackleg once but that was obvious what that was and after a week of it I put her down.

Mark
 
It happens. Usually a couple of times a year on average to me. Had one last spring dropped right over right in front of me. Heart attack I figure. I was out along the fence hooking on to the disc,heard just a quick blat and the rest of the cows started thundering toward her,surrounded her and started going nuts. Looked like her legs had thrashed about twice after she hit the ground and that was it. Dead as a doornail.
Had a dairy cow die right in the stanchion one night right after we milked her too. Same thing. Her feet slipped off in to the gutter,she scrambled a little,then settled down and just layed there dead.
 
Other thing may be "horse apples". Around here produced by Bois D' Arc trees; think other places the name is Osage Orange. They are pale green and about the size of a large grapefruit. Have some smell/taste that cattle like and they are tough and cows can't chew them up. Get lodged in windpipe and cow chokes to death.

Mark
 
It could be anything , gas ,twisted guts, bad hay,(no nutrients in the hay ,moldy etc.... )hardware, black leg, heart attack. I believe in vaccinateing. My dad never did with his herd of 125hd, but. I lost a few asked vet he said at the time I started to vaccinate my problem was black leg. It stays in the soil and is carried by sheep, and deer, also he mentioned lepto 5 different strands carried by sheep ,and deer.He said to start vaccinateing, he didnt have to tell me twice .Everyyear after that I used 9way at the time I was running 150hd.Im sorry for your loss. Hope you have better luck.
 
Does your state have a veterinary diagnostic lab? Last head scratcher like this I had it cost about $100 or so to find out she had gotten into a tobacco barn and eat'n about 2 sticks worth of cured leaf.

With just one cow die'n like this if you are not going to haul her some where the best thing to do is look for out of the ordinary things in the pasture she could have got'n into.

Good luck.

Dave
 
Animal do not die without a reason. If nothing is obvious best to have her posted if the vet cannot figure it out go to state it might put other herds in danger in addition to more in you herd. gitrib
 
Animals can die suddenly from heart attack , aneurism, pulmonary embolism and cerebral hemorrhage just like a human can . A friend loaded a steer onto his trailer to take it to slaughter plant. The steer was excited and nervous . When he got there the steer was dead in the trailer. My children had some pet pygmy goats. We found one of them paralyzed on one side of its body. It was getting old, I figured it had a stroke.
 
I had a goat die from a bee sting once. It swallowed a bee that was struggling in the waterting trough. It must have been stung in the throat and the swelling choked it to death. My wife watched it drinking water, swallow the bee and it gave a bleat & keeled over.
 
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