Here is the weekend recap: there was a new heifer calf and one new bull calf born on the farm.
Starting this week I wanted to try to implement something new and interesting into my blog! I thought setting a theme for the week would help make the topics of each post more thrilling and interesting, so this week I thought it would be fun to explore the world of veterinary medicine at the dairy farm. I have talked about treating our sick calves and cows for various things such as metritis and ketosis, but I have not talked about the vaccines and how they are so effective at helping sick cows. Today, I want to start by talking about nuflor.
Nuflor is an antibiotic which main purpose is to treat bacterial infections. Antibiotics are powerful tools that interfere will cellular processes of the bacterium which ultimately leads to their demise. When I did more research about this antibiotic online I found that the major component is forfenicol. Forfenicol is designed to manage bovine respiratory disease (BRD) and bovine foot rot. Additionally, forfenicol is classified as a broad spectrum antibiotic meaning it is capable of controlling both gram positive and gram negative infections. If that sounded confusing, all that means is this is antibiotic is effective against a large variety of bacteria! A gram positive bacteria will have a very thick peptidoglycan layer (peptides and sugars bonded together) comprising the cell wall while a gram negative bacteria generally has thinner cell walls and a thicker layer of lipopolysaccharides (lipids and sugars bonded together).
Phew, that was a lot! Here is a cute cow picture of the girls eating their breakfast to help you process this new information!
Today we had no new calves born
Today we shipped 4,878 gallons of milk.
No comments:
Post a Comment