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| It's interesting you bring that up. My feed man and I have been talking about this very topic for the last month. From what I know and that is not too much, if we are talking about the same lymphoma, it is caused by a virus (Leukosis) which causes cancer. My feed man has a few herds that are 40 to 80% positive for leukosis. It is spread by transmission of blood from an infected animal to a non-infected animal. So the best way to stop it is use separate needles and new sleeves on every animal. I have been kind of doing this on my dairy by using separate needles on separate groups of cows. Only when I am working my repro program otherwise it was when I felt like I needed a new needle. In the last month I have changed to SEPARATE NEEDLES and SEPARATE SLEEVES for each cow. I don't know if this is your problem this one thing to look at. We tested 3 cows that came up being off feed (it only costs $5/sample, I didn't think it was too bad) one was positive out of the 3. The first cow was a 4yr. old+ (I thought for sure she would have it), the other 2 were 2 yr. olds+ and one of the 2 yr. olds was positive for LEUKOSIS. So that threw me a little because my wife (who is a vet) said it typically shows up in older cows being 4 yrs. or more. What we are going to do from here I really don't know yet. We haven't culled any cows because of lymphoma and or really had any die (that I know of) for lymphoma. My death rate is running a little higher this year than I would like but we have had some calving issues and some mastitis problems this winter. If I have any more unexpected deaths I might start posting some of those cows to see if I need to start testing for Leukosis. Hopefully this is clear as mud Good Luck! | |
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Lymphoma??? Or not??
