COWS - PINK EYE

On the topic of farm animals, I think some readers will find benefit from the study below.

Ingraham Academy Graduate: Cath Taylor

We take 20 cows from Skye back to our farm near Elgin on NE coast of Scotland, during the winter for calving and extra feed.  As usual one or two of the first lot began to develop pink eye fairly soon on coming inside and we duly got the vet out.  They had to be crated and have antibiotic ointment plastered around the eye which is always stressful for them.  So I decided to try oils.  With Caroline's help it was decided to try  bergamot and sandalwood oils, red clay and dried bladderwrack seaweed. 10 drops of each oil was added per bucket of water, a handful of bladderack and  about a tblspoon of red clay per bucket.

The buckets were filled if needed usually morning and night. The cows just took whatever they needed when they needed.  Some buckets would disappear immediately, others would last a day or two.  Sometimes it would be one remedy they would chose sometimes another.  The empty buckets would often land up in the cattle court so we then made concrete partitions in the tough and filled these with water giving the same amount of remedies, at a much lower concentration as the individual partitions must have held maybe 3 bucketfuls.  We then found that one cow had developed quite bad pink eye so we were much more meticulous about filling the partitions as soon as they emptied, again, there didn't seem to be a pattern about which remedy went (however I suspect there was if you monitored it more carefully).  Her pink eye cleared up completely within a week.

Now we start the remedies as soon as there is any evidence of watering eyes and just keep using them then until the cows go back to Skye at the end of May (they come the beginning of December.)  It may sound expensive but I think it would turn out a lot cheaper than getting the vet out even a couple of times, and there are periods when the remedies are only taken up very slowly.

We also noticed another positive effect from the oils, since we started the oils to prevent pink eye we have had no more problems with scouring.  The cows have now been 4 years in the same court with no disinfecting although the court is completely emptied for the Summer and we have not had single case of scouring again (in fact we start the oils now if calves arrive before pink eye).There may well be a pattern to the uptake of oils but we have never monitored it exactly although it would be quite easy to just keep a record of the uptake and the appearance of watery eyes. As the calves get older they will often play with the remedies as well.  It would seem that pink eye remains latent within the herd but can be controlled with the oils. Since starting the oils we have not had to resort to any vet input for pink eye nor for scouring and I think last year I don't think we had the vet out at all.

Note: Pink-eye, or infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis, is an inflammatory bacterial infection of the eye that can cause permanent blindness in severe cases. It is a contagious disease and occurs mainly in young cattle in summer and autumn.Pinkeye can affect up to 80% of a mob, with affected weaner calves losing up to 10% of their body weight. Although rare, deaths may occur when both eyes are affected, due to starvation, thirst or misadventure.