We have had quite a busy week at the farm so far and today is no exception! After tending to all of the calves we went to the sick cow pen to check on our girls and give any necessary medications. When we were checking on some of our cows we concluded that three of them had mild ketosis and of those three one cow was also afflicted with metritis. Metritis is an infection of the uterus characterized by its pungent smell and thick, white discharge. For treatment we collected three bottles of dextrose to IV each one and the cow that also had metritis will be given a shot of polyflex ampicillin for a minimum of three days and will be reevaluated afterwards.
Did you know that polyflex has a milk and meat withhold period? For milk any cow treated with polyflex cannot be sold for human consumption during the treatment period and for 48 hours after the last dosage. As for the meat withhold period this is during the active treatment and for six days following the last dosage. This is to ensure that the public will not consume any animal product that might be mixed with medications. Safety is a high priority on our farm and when we treated this cow with polyflex we did several things to ensure that everyone knew. First a giant red marker was flagged on her cow card in the computer system, second we tied two bright red ribbons on her back legs which indicate that she was treated with polyflex on our farm, and lastly we moved this cow into a special pen just for cows that have medications in their system that require special care when milking. Since we cannot keep her milk or risk it going into the bulk tank we will make sure that her milk is properly and safely disposed of.
Today we shipped 5,609 gallons of milk and had one new heifer calf. '
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