How to treat and prevent scours in calves

Calf scours – diarrhea occurring in the first 30 days of a calf’s life – is caused by viruses, parasites, bacteria, or any combination of those.

Digital Content Editor for Successful Farming magazine and Agriculture.com from 2013 to 2015.

Calf scours – diarrhea occurring in the first 30 days of a calf's life – is caused by viruses, parasites, bacteria, or any combination of those. The exact cause is less important than prompt treatment, says John Middleton, University of Missouri professor of food-animal medicine.

The primary harm that scours causes to calves are dehydration, loss of electrolytes (body salts), and inflammation of intestinal lining which impairs the ability to digest nutrients. These things combined cause weight loss and low blood sugar, leading to death if not treated as soon as possible. Some calves last 1-2 days after symptoms show, others can last two weeks.

Prevention

Calf scours are transmitted most through fecal-oral contact. Keeping the cattle pens and calving environment clean is vital to break the fecal-oral contact cycle and, in turn, prevent scours. An ideal situation is to move cows and newborn calves to a clean pasture area.

Keep in mind that overcrowded pens increase chances of scours in calves, as does penning newborn calves with older ones. Colorado State University recommends segregating calves by age to prevent transmitting those infectious agents from "apparently healthy" older calves to the newborns.

As the calf is building an immune system, receiving colostrum from the cow in the first day of the calf's life is extremely important.

• READ MORE:Colostrum's Critical Role

Symptoms & Treatment

This dehydration and loss of body salts yields symptoms including sunken eyes, watery stool that could be brown, green, grey or yellow, weak or depressed disposition, swaying while walking, and/or too weak to stand.

"Once they start to get a liquid stool, we need to keep up with hydration and electrolytes. That prevents them from getting severely ill," Middleton says. "The most severely ill ones need to be taken to a veterinary clinic and treated with IV fluids, while calves that are standing and can still suckle can be treated with oral fluids and electrolytes."

It's really not all that different from humans being sick.

"Really, what we're doing is treating the calf's symptoms, much like if we were to get food poisoning," Middleton says. "We'd hydrate ourselves with an electrolyte solution, but there's usually no specific treatment for the diarrhea that might be associated with food poisoning. It is much the same case when a calf gets the scours. We're trying to keep it hydrated so its body can deal with the invading organism and clear it on its own."

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