electrolyte recipe for scouring calves

[near horse]

Hi,

I thought that I would add this for any cattle folks that may have calves experiencing diarrhea. As you may well know, diarrhea can rapidly lead to dehydration and eventual death – particularly in young animals. The cause of death usually ends up being metabolic acidosis (blood pH gets too low) caused by loss of bicarbonate in the diarrhea. So it is essential to get bicarb into the calves to try and stop or at least limit the blood pH drop.
We have had great success using a home made recipe (and I’ve seen it elsewhere) primarily because the commercially available electrolytes are incredibly overpriced and prohibitive when treating a calf for a number of days. The recipe for 1 gallon follows:

86 grams of table sugar
14 grams of baking soda (bicarb)
13 grams of table salt

3 grams of potassium chloride (not so critical if unavailable)

Discard unused electroyte solution. We pre weigh 1 gallon batches in small ziplocks so if needed they are at the ready.

I would have to look at how these translate into ounces or teaspoons, cups etc. Anyway, mix w/ one gallon warm water. Give via bottle if they’ll drink it (often they will take this when they won’t take milk) or use gastric tube but get this stuff into them. We go for 1-2 gallons per day. Avoid giving milk at this point – it tends to just sit in the gut and makes things worse.

NOTE: this is treatment for diarrhea only to buy some time while you are finding and treating the cause of the scours.

Good luck.

[CharlyBonifaz]

Avoid giving milk at this point – it tends to just sit in the gut and makes things worse.

I’m afraid I’d want to differentiate that a little :rolleyes:
calves that are younger than 7 days should not be taken off milk; calves older than a week can stand 24 hours without, but then should be back on milk;
store the mixture in a dry place though as the salt will draw water……
good luck 😉

[J-L]

Thanks Charlie. That’s about what we used to use. I now get some ready made stuff with some probiotics in it, but I’ll bet they’re close to the same.

[Carl Russell]

We don’t take the calves off milk, just alternate so that the bicarbonate doesn’t counteract the action of the rennet. Give the meds in AM, then at mid-day give the milk, so that they can have food, cause it’s not the milk that’s making them sick, but the bug in the gut.

Carl

[near horse]

Sorry, but I beg to differ. I have worked in livestock nutrition and disease for many years and have treated hundreds of calves (day olds to month olds) and the number one issue that will set you back is giving them milk when they are scouring. If you are really concerned about getting protein into them, you can add some nonfat milk to the electrolytes.

In fact, many if not most calves we see refuse to drink milk but if offered a bottle of this electrolyte solution, they will gladly drink it down. My wife calls them “calf cokes”:). When they seem to be doing better(mooing to eat), you can add some milk replacer to the electrolytes maybe a quarter of the normal amount and increase slowly over the next 3-4 days until you’re at full feed.

cause it’s not the milk that’s making them sick, but the bug in the gut.

Carl,
True the “bug” is making them sick but what kills the patient is very often the symptom of the disease or the body’s response to the “bug”. Think of a fever. That’s actually the body’s response to the invader but we all intervene when an animal or person spikes a fever. Because an elevated body temp wreaks havoc on the body’s own enzyme systems necessary for staying alive. We immediately treat the symptoms while looking for the causitive agent.

So in the case of diarrhea, we have : an attempt to flush out the gut (good) subsequent inability to absorb water and necessary nutrients (bad). If you continue to feed milk you likely: slow down the gut (good) but may provide needed protein to the “bugs” that are causing the probelm allowing them to proliferate (bad)

PLEASE NOTE – I am not saying to forgo colostrum. On the contrary, no colostrum is pretty much a death sentence. It might not be today or tomorrow but within a week or so they will be exposed to a pathogen that they can’t handle and they’re gone. AND I ‘m not saying to keep them on electrolytes indefinitely. Pull the milk. Replace w/ electrolytes and watch what happens. Slowly start them back onto milk. The whole process takes less than a week.

BTW- when your calf is acidodic, it will have a rapid heart rate and be hyperventilating (blowing off CO2) in response to the Ph imbalance in the blood. That imbalance eventually shuts down organ systems, including the heart and kills them. Also, if the gut irritation is too severe, even the bicarb in the electrolytes can’t be absorbed. Then the only treatment is IV bicarb -from the vet (In fact, call the vet because hitting a blood vessel in a sick animal w/ low blood pressure is pretty hard to do).

Just my experiences.;)

[CharlyBonifaz]

near horse,
hoping for a good discussion, I’ll chime in again, even though this is not a medical forum…….

However, the confirmation by Doll (1992) that hypersecretion also plays an important part in viral diarrhoea changed our traditional view of handling diarrhoeic calves in so far as starvation is not an option to reduce the degree of diarrhoea.

and

Traditionally, continued feeding of milk to diarrhoeic calves was thought to aggravate diarrhoea because malabsorbtion would provide substrate to the intestinal flora for fermentation and thus lead to osmotic diarrhoea.
Consequently, withdrawal of milk during the first days of diarrhoea was recommended. In later studies, secretory mechanisms were found to play the major role even in diarrhoea caused by viruses or cryptosporidia, and evidence was produced that diarrhoeic calves have sufficient capacity to digest milk. Furthermore, the ingestion of adequate amounts of milk showed no negative effect on duration of diarrhoea.

quoted from the Irish Veterinary Journal
http://www.irishveterinaryjournal.com/Links/PDFs/CE-Large/CELA_Jan_09.pdf

modern electrolyte solutions aid the casein coagulation in the abomasum and still buffer in the small intestines, they are meant to be given with milk.

what I like about your recipe: easily available ingredients on hand immediately when needed; as is, you are right: it should not be fed with milk but as an extra meal in between for example…..

I wholeheartedly agree to your last paragraph!
elke

[Carl Russell]

Thanks Geoff for your discussion, but I will concur with Elke.

I also have been raising and caring for calves for many years, and while it is conventional wisdom to withhold milk from scouring calves, the milk is their food, and there is good evidence, and I have found it to be true, that feeding the electrolytes with the milk, or soon before, or after is what complicates the problem.

Sure the calves will survive for several days on electrolytes alone, but it won’t give them what they need from the milk, and the milk is not the problem. And this is also verified by my vet.

The electrolytes are necessary, and your recipe is good and easy.

Thanks, Carl

[near horse]

I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I’ve probably treated close to 400 calves with diarrhea, often associated w/ cryptosporidium. We worked our way through every possible combination of treatment, many w/ veterinary consultation (large animal vets at local vet school). In the end, they had to agree that feeding milk to calves w/ irritated guts and diarrhea was giving us trouble. The calves that we lost or had to use IV bicarb were those that were on full milk diets.

Remember – vets are not usually trained as nutritionists. What is food but an amalgamation of nutrients. Electrolyte solutions are providing a readily available energy source (the sugar) and while you won’t see growth, they do quite well – not just barely alive for a day or so. Also, I don’t see how the electrolyte is causing the problem with the milk.

starvation is not an option to reduce the degree of diarrhoea.

Feeding electrolytes is not starving the animal. Also, the trouble we see with feeding milk is slowing or stasis of gut motility rapidly leading to a bloating situation.

Anyway – it’s like chiropractics. Do what works for you.:)

[CharlyBonifaz]

I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I can live with that 😉

Also, I don’t see how the electrolyte is causing the problem with the milk.

me neither 🙂
it’s the bicarb; it interferes with the low pH needed in the abomasum to coagulate the milk, remember it is a buffer…..
over here the gurus advocate a timelapse of at least 2 hours between milk and regular electrolyte solution
with the late developements on the market they want it given with milk because they added lactic acid bacteria, which will thrive only in milk

[becorson]

There are quite a few causes of diarrhea in calves–so what helps one case might not help another. this might help explain the differences of opinion and experience.
I’m a pathologist so I see a lot of scouring calves that don’t make it.

it’s the nature of experts to disagree but ( some) nutritionalists and (some) veterinarians do agree that scouring calves do in fact benefit from milk. Apparently, the enterocytes (cells that line the intestine) thrive only if they are bathed in proteins.

Of course, any formula can cause problems if it is too concentrated and apparently
Soy-based milk replacers are more likely to cause problems than milk-based forumlas.

remember, now: “the pathologist is always right, just 24 hours too late!” (ha ha)

[Ira]

Could you substitute raw eggs for the milk?

[Vicki]

It depends on whether the calf is scouring from a bacteria or from a virus, or both, or crypto or caccidio. Some problems cause sloughing of intestinal wall.

I give homemade electrolyte solution, sometimes with a bit of molasses, between feedings if there is any watery stool.

Storey’s Guide to Raising Beef Cattle has a good section on calf scours including recipe for homemade electrolyte solution.

One little Jersey too stubborn to suck, should have died many times over, probably a viral scours that led to bacterial, but with tubing every couple hours and my sheer stubborness not to lose her, she pulled through, went to a few shows, and is now a decent working milk cow.

I kept her in my bathroom for 3 weeks, bedded on old sheets and towels, as it was january in Ohio–brrr–else I wouldn’t have gone out to her every two hours and she would’ve frozen. I was crazy to do all that for a stupid heiffer, but the farmer I raised her for will do almost anything for me now. (And I learned a lot!)

[near horse]

Well – I need to modify my earlier post here and agree that from further reading (and calf scours here and there), I think I better understand the “milk/no milk” situation. In reading Essential Guide to Calving by Heather Smith Thomas who’s been raising cattle on Montana range for over 4 decades, it became clear I screwed up some in my electrolyte – milk posting. It seems there’s good evidence (duh) that bicarb can cause milk clotting to be inhibited in the abomasum (screwing up milk digestion) by raising the abomasal pH. It has been suggested to replace bicarb with acetate which will not affect milk digestion OR, as some suggested, separate the milk feeding and electrolytes by 2 hrs or more.

I think our experience has been that 1) scouring calf does not want to suck milk but will gladly drink electrolytes 2) when we force feed milk (tube ’em) I believe it’s getting into the rumen and then ends up triggering a Clostridial enterotoxemia (overeating disease). The Clostridial toxins shut down gut motility, start to cause some bloating and pretty quickly can/will kill the calf. I’m not sure (don’t recall) if we fed electrolytes at the same time we fed milk (sometimes they’ll suck down 1L of milk and quit even though they’re losing 2X that in diarrhea) so we would switch over to electrolytes to ensure hydration was keeping pace.

The reason this is fresh as we just lost a calf to what I believe was enterotoxemia (either Clostridial or E.coli) – no diarrhea at the time, no cough …. just no appetite, depressed lethargic and below normal temps. Should have recognized it but no serious gut discomfort (kicking at gut etc) but no bowel movement w/o my intervention.

So – I’m sorry if I was on my high horse regarding calf diarrhea and electrolytes as I was wrong in my assessment of what was going on (although I can still be off base but getting closer to the target).

[wvhorsedoc]

In practice, I generally had excellent results following Penn State Extension Service recommendations. First, leave 3 to 4 hours time between administering any solution containing baking soda and any solution containing milk products. Second, very yound calves cannot digest sucrose sugars (eg. table sugar etc.) which results in making the diarrhea worse if administered. A workable solution for most simple diarrhea’s is: 1 tsp low sodium salt, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 3/4 oz (1 packet) of fruit pectin, 1 can beef consomme all dissolved in 2 quarts warm water. Administer 1 pint per 10 pounds body weight divided into 3 or 4 times daily. Calves that have lost about 10% of their body weight really need a couple rounds of IV treatment to have a chance of survival. In extremely cold weather making a bed in a bath-tub might be considered. Hope my gems of wisdom help in this discussion. WVhorsedoc
P.S. My son that lives in Alaska laughs when I talk about cold weather…

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