UAF Cooperative Extension Service. Extending knowledge,
changing lives.
Raising livestock can be challenging. Even with the best management,
animals can become sick. Knowing when you have a healthy animal is easy.
They're bright, alert, responsive to their environment, have a shiny hair coat, and a
good appetite,
but do you know when your animals not doing well. Do you know when you should
call your veterinarian?
Hi, I'm Dr. Lisa Lunn, Extension Veterinarian
for University of Alaska Fairbanks. Knowing your animals normal behavior and
vital signs
are an important step in knowing when they're healthy or not healthy.
It's also crucial that you have a good working relationship with the local
veterinarian
that can come out when you need them to assess your animal.
Together, you guys can put together a great working relationship
for good herd health and overall productivity and longevity of your herd.
How do you know if your animal is sick. Generally speaking, anytime their
behaviors is off,
you should investigate. Ask yourself, are they separating themselves away from the
rest of the herd.
Animals under six spend a lotta time by themselves. They may not come up to the
feed bunk to eat.
They may be seeking solitude in the woods, so you need to check those animals
out.
Also look at their general appearance in terms of cleanliness.
Animals that are not feeling well spend a lotta time lying down
and they may have their flanks covered with dirt and manure.
And if they're the only animal in the herd that looks like that, it's a good
indication that they're not feeling well.
If you have an animal that can not stand and they're recumbent,
that needs immediate veterinary attention. Similarly,
if you're seeing any neurologic signs, if the animal's laying on its side and
paddling its legs,
if it's having a seizure or if it appears blind,
you should contact your veterinarian for advice. Also if you have an animal that
can stand,
but it's non weight bearing on one limb, that requires immediate attention
because there's a serious lameness issue going on.
Eating and drinking is an important part of overall animal health,
but sometimes when you have animals out on pasture, you may not know if
they've been
eating.
Luckily for us ruminants have designed an easy way for us to tell.
If you go to the left side of the animal, there's a little triangular area called
the paralumbar fossa
and we've outlined this with some tape. It starts at the last rib,
goes across to the hipbone, and informs a nice little triangle.
The rumen or the big, large fermentation vat compartment of the stomach
lies directly below this paralumbar fossa.
If the animal has been eating, they'll be food in the rumen,
and this paralumbar fossa will be distended
to about the level of the last rib. If the animal has not been eating,
this area will become sunken and there will be a very visible triangular indent
in the side of the animal. Now, again, this is on the left side because that's where
the rumen is on the body.
If you notice that your animal has this triangular indent pushed
greatly out and they're having trouble breathing, that indicates that we've got
a condition called
rumen bloat, where there's too much gas accumulating in that rumen.
That's a medical emergency and you need to call your veterinarian right away.
So when in doubt, if you're not sure if your animals been eating, look at the
triangular area of the paralumbar fossa
and that will tell you. Animals that are not drinking enough
soon become dehydrated and as an owner there's an easy way for you to check to
see if your animals becoming dehydrated.
If we grab the skin on the neck and retract it, just pull it gently
and let go, it should bounce right back to its normal position.
If the skin stays tented after you pull it,
that indicates that the animal's dehydrated. You can also do this over the
eye
and grab the skin over the eye and it should bounce right back. And then with
ruminant animals, animals that chew their cud,
there's also a special thing that happens with them when they become
severely dehydrated,
the eye will retract away from the skull and kind of sink back into the head.
Some farmers refer to this as being sunken-eyed.
So if you see that the eyeball itself is sinking back into the skull,
that's a sign of severe dehydration and your veterinarian should be contacted so
that fluids can be administered to your animal.
It's always important to monitor urination and defecation in the animals.
If you have a male animal and you observe them stretching out with their
back legs behind them,
straining to urinate, you may or may not see urine actually dripping from the
prepuce,
but if it's not a full constant stream of urine, that's a problem.
That indicates that they have some sort of urinary tract obstruction and they
need immediate medical attention
because without it their bladder will continue to fill with urine and it could
potentially rupture.
In terms of defecation, it depends on what kinda ruminant you have,
for sheep and goats they have pelleted feces, and it should make remain a
normal pellet.
If the pellet becomes loose, clumped, or a watery diarrhea
that's a big problem. For cattle, if it becomes
a projectile diarrhea, most definitely a problem that warrants having your
veterinarian come out.
If it's looser than normal manure and the animals losing a lot of weight,
again, that in indicates that you need to contact your veterinarian for an
investigative work up.
Pneumonia can be a common problem in farm animals.
One way that you can tell if your animal's having some respiratory issues
is it take their respiratory rate. If you stand back and watch their chest move,
each time that it moves will count as one respiration.
Count that for a minute and that will give you the respiratory rate.
If you go to our website, we will have listings have all the different vital
signs including respiratory rate
for all the different farm animal species. Another part of
looking to see if your animal's having respiratory problems is the check out
their nose.
A normal healthy animal will have a small amount of clear moisture
around both nostrils and the animal also be licking their nose a lot
to keep it clean. Farm animals like to keep food and dirt off of their nose.
So if you see a lot of feed stuck to the nose, if you see
thick mucus, coming out or blood coming out,
that indicates that we have some sort of respiratory problem, and your
veterinarian should be contacted so that they can work out the
issue for you. One of the best things you can do is an owner is to get the vital
signs of your animal before you call your veterinarian.
That gives them a better idea of what may be going on before they come to your farm.
We talked about how you can get the respirations of the animal by counting the
chest movements.
The other thing you can do is to take a rectal temperature using a regular
digital thermometer
inserted into the rectum, when it beeps, pull it out,
read the temperature, and record it on a piece of paper. You can also get the
heart rate back here.
There's an artery that runs in the middle of the tail, so if you put your
hand about the level of the rectum, let your fingers fall into a natural groove
that falls in the middle of the tail.
Wrap your thumb around just to help hold your fingers in place and then gently
put a little bit of pressure, and count for 30 seconds or fifteen seconds
to get the heart rate per minute. If you have trouble
because the cows moving its tail too much or they're a little bit nervous
having you hold it,
you can also get the heart rate by listening to the heart. To do that
you're gonna need a stethoscope. You can buy an
inexpensive stethoscope online or you may be able to buy one at your local
co-op.
The heart is located behind the elbow of the animal.
So you find elbow at the top of the leg and you're gonna take
the headpiece of the stethoscope and press it deep underneath that elbow,
and hold it in place and again count for 15 seconds or 30,
and you'll be able to get the heart rate. You wanna make sure that you tuck this in
deep because if you don't you're not going to hear the heart.
So once you get it in there and you hear the rhythmic beating of the heart,
again counting for 15 or 30 seconds, get the heart rate,
record it, and then you'll have some good information to give your veterinarian.
You can find the numbers for the vital signs of various farm species
and other helpful information at the UAF Cooperative Extension Service website.
Remember working together you and your veterinarian can put together a good
herd health program
for the longevity and production of your herd.
For more information contact your local Cooperative Extension Service office.