Respiratory Disease in Cattle: Diagnosis Flashcards
What are the over all differentials for cattle respiratory disease?
- Infection- bacteria, virus, fungal, parasitic
- Managment- allergic, dusty, outside
- Combination
How can history assist in diagnosis?
- Recent stressors- shipping, weaned, disbudded- enzootix pneumonia
- Turned out- sudden onset- lung worm
- Fattening cattle- manheimia, pasturellosis, histophilus somni
- First lactation- parasitic (reinfection?)
What does stertorous upper respiratory noise imply?
- Laryngeal pathology- commonly chondiritis
- May respond to medical therapy
- may require tracheostomy
What are the differentials for a profuse nosebleed?
- Venal caval thrombosis- hopeless
- Foreign body
What should be examined on a respiratory exam?
- Observe appearance- overgrown coat (too cold)
- Ear position- depressed/cold
- Behaviour
- Coughing
- TPR
- Respiratory noise
- Respiratory depth
- Posture- abducted elbows
Breathing patterns:
* Deep breaths, elbows abducted= air hungry
* Shallow breaths- pain- pleural or peritoneal
What are the principles of laboratory diagnosis?
- Sample acute cases- before secondaries
- Normal commensals- pasturella, manheimia, URT mycoplasma
- URT may not reflect LRT
- Use viral transport medium if requesting isolation or at least a plain swab
- Mycoplasma also requires transport medium
- Single antibody titres may be historic
- Charcoal medium for bacteria
What can the following samples be used to diagnose?
1. Nasopharyngeal swab
2. Conjunctival swab/scrape
3. Serology (single/paired)
4. Bronchoalveolar lavage
5. Faecal sampling
- IBR
- IBR
- All
- M. bovis, IBR, RSV, PI3, BVD, Haemophilus, Lungworm
- D. viviparous- baerman
What group samples can be taken?
Bulk milk antibodies for dairy herd monitoring
* Bulk dilution
* Historic
* Useful for trends- dry cows reenter
* Negative is more useful
How can lung scanning be used?
- Prognostic indicator
- Presence of lesions may indicate poor detection
- 7.5MHz
- Between rib spaces
- To see whether to retain dairy calves
- Scoring system (Ollivett)
How should the building be subjectively examined?
- Assess at level of animals- breathe it
- Urea, warm air
- Underfoot squelch test
- Are you too cold/hot
- Dust in the air
- Coughing
- Temperature of the bedding
What is required for the stack effect?
How can it be tested?
Both outlets and inlets
* Indications of adequate airflow- tiger stripes, cob webs
* Smoke tests- smoke bomb or metal bucket with damp straw
What are common reasons for lack of stack effect?
- No outlet
- Building too high
- Insuficcient biomass
How can environment data be collected?
Data loggers for temperature and relative humidity
If more evidence and observations are needed what can be done?
- Respiratory scores of groups of calves
- Repeat at different times of the year to assess a problem or monitor calf health
- Wisconsin system and variations
