Preventing and treating foot rot without antibiotics
Image caption: A relatively severe case of foot rot. This animal was at a locomotion score of 4. Dry ground and daily treatment with Kopertox cured this case and the animal was able to return to the pasture.
The weather this Spring has been unprecedented for most of South Texas. We have received over 30 inches of rain since March. Our historical average yearly rainfall for Wilson County is 31 inches. It has been a blessing and a curse. We came into this year with a terrible drought. Michael, our Operations Foreman at Pajarito, and I calculated in January that we had approximately 88 animal days left at the ranch before we would either have to supplemental feed or begin destocking. We survived the February record snow storm that left the ranch without power for almost a week. The cattle lost some body condition, but otherwise we fared well. Then starting in March it began to rain and it hasn’t let up since. Don’t get me wrong I am not the one to complain about rain. In my decade plus of ranching I have been through two bad droughts, one the worst in recorded history. This week the weather forecast looks relatively clear and hopefully the ground can dry out for a few days. When the hot, humid and wet weather started earlier in the year that’s when we starting seeing the first signs of foot rot within our herd.
To begin I want to give you all a little context. We are currently running about 400 stockers at Pajarito Ranch near Nixon, Texas. We have it broken into two herds. One herd is heifers mixed with about 30 head that are scheduled to finish late August and there’s about 100 head in that herd. The other herd is all steers ranging from 600 to 1000 lbs. We strategically purchased cattle of from different cow/calf producers that all have different genetics. We have Beefmasters, Red Angus (Pharo genetics), STAR/commercial, Mashona/commercial, Longhorn/Red Devon and Longhorn Red Devon F1s/South Poll. There are a lot of trends starting to emerge with our herd data which includes Average Daily Gain (ADG), Body Condition Score (BCS) and health records. I have some unconfirmed theories about what factors effect these various trends including genetic and epi-genetic traits. That’s for a whole other article and discussion. Since today’s article is about hoof rot I am going to focus on the animal health aspect. I want to discuss how to possibly prevent it, how to determine if an animal needs treatment and options for treating foot rot.
What is foot rot? Foot rot in cattle is caused by the bacteria Fusobacterium necrophorum and/or Bacteroides melaninogenicus. These bacteria are common in the environment and F. necrophorum is present in the rumen and feces of normal cattle. F. necrophorum has been shown to survive in the soil for up to 10 months.
To become infected and exhibit signs - this takes about five days. The skin must be broken for the bacteria that is present in the environment to enter. Imagine your skin after you’ve been sitting in the pool all day. It looks like a prune and it’s rather vulnerable to being cut. In many instances cattle standing in ponds, walking in wet grass all morning or simply walking through mud all day have the same experience. In particular high temperatures and excess moisture and/or humidity also cause the skin between the claws to chap or crack. Also exposure to objects such as stones, plant stubble, wire, nails, and/or glass injure skin of the interdigital space, even microscopically, and infection may result. Foot rot incidence varies with weather, season and or pasture condition.
Prevention should be the first thought on every producers mind. It’s only logical to prevent a problem before it arises. I would typically start by talking about the only vaccine available for hoof rot and that’s Fusogard by Elanco Animal Health. The efficacy of Fusogard for the prevention of hoof rot isn’t proven. We were recently given some great advice by Shawn Gilmore, DVM at Karnes City Veterinary Hospital. When these hot, excess moisture weather patterns are emerging move your cattle to higher, well drained ground. Also, mowing your pastures can reduce ground level moisture (morning dew) and keep the plants from getting too rank. These mature grasses have hard stems and as the cattle walk through the grass it’s the perfect scenario for injuring the skin of the interdigital space. Moving the herd frequently should also help since the bacteria is typically spread via manure. Perhaps frequent moves in combination with a larger area to graze (lower density) is more appropriate. We found that even though we were moving the cattle two to three times per day our cases of hoof rot were not decreasing. We also feed free-choice Redmond Mineral Salt, Redmond Conditioner and Sodium bicarbonate as recommended by Steve Campbell. We have not been doing this long enough to prove the efficacy, but Steve has seen some astounding results in lowering the rumens pH, thus bolstering the animals immune system.
Image caption: Image by Kent Wuthrich. Our steer herd grazing at a relatively high density (around 40,000 lbs per acre) in late Spring at Pajarito Ranch. It doesn’t get much more idealistic than this!
After preventative steps are exhausted it’s all about diagnosis and treatment. We decided to take the approach of identifying the level of lameness and treating accordingly. Locomotion scoring is a 5-point system based on both gait and posture: 1) Normal: The cow is not lame; the back is flat. 2) Mildly lame: The back is slightly arched when walking. 3) Moderately lame: The back is arched when both standing and walking. The cow walks with short strides in one or more legs. 4) Lame: The lame cow can still bear some weight on the affected foot. 5) Severely lame: The back is arched; the cow refuses to bear weight on the affected foot and remains recumbent.
Here’s our treatment protocol, but I recommend you consult with your veterinarian to decide what is best for your operation. Locomotion score 1) Normal - no treatment necessary. This animal would not be discernible from the rest of the herd. 2) Mildly lame - make note of their VID (visual id tag number) and keep an eye on this animal. 3) Moderately lame - pull the animal from the herd, move to the sick pen (i.e. dry lot) diagnose, wash hooves thoroughly and treat with Kopertox. 4) Lame - this animal should have already been pulled and treated for several days with Kopertox. Depending on the severity of the damaged skin either continue treating with Kopertox daily or make the decision to administer approved antibiotics. 5) Severly lame - this animal needs to be treated with approved antibiotics immediately. Medications will speed the recovery of the animal significantly. We have had good success with the antibiotic Nuflor, but remember these animals are already pulled and nearby a squeeze chute. Thus, we chose Nuflor because it’s effective and affordable. If your treating the cattle on pasture with a dart gun your protocol and antibiotic of choice will be very different. Once again these are the protocols we have developed for our program. I have listed them here simply to share as an example. Our goal is to use antibiotics as a last resort because those animals must ultimately be removed from our value-added program according to our protocol. We have pulled about 40 head over the past three months for foot rot and out of those 40 we have only treated 6 with antibiotics. I’d say that’s statistically acceptable.
Image caption: This case of foot rot went on too long. This animal should have been pulled significantly earlier. This animal had a locomotion score of 4, but because of the severity of the wound the decision was made to immediately administer Nuflor, an approved antibiotic.
Animal welfare is a top priority for our operation. We have found that if treated early, response is quick and recovery can be expected in a short amount of time. When treatment is delayed, recovery is significantly delayed or could fail. I hope this article gets you thinking about alternatives to immediately administering antibiotics for hoof rot. I did not even touch on the role of genetics and epi-genetics, and how that might play a significant role within animal health. It could possibly play a much bigger role in animal health than we imagine. More to come on that in another article.
Questions or comments please feel free to send me an email to travis@grazinglands.com
-Travis Krause, CEO & Founder of Grazing Lands
