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| I lost 8 steers (out of about 40 head) on pasture a few years ago. The worst part is I never did get an explanation. The vet did a postmortem on two of them and tried to save a few more that were sick, but they couldn't be helped. One of the sick steers lasted a month, but in the end I had to shoot him anyway. I told the vet to send tissue samples to the university to do lab work for anything that made sense. Everything came back negative, so I still don't know what they ate. The post didn't tell anything except that their kidneys probably shut down (even though the kidneys looked healthy). 3 vet visits and a pile of lab bills later and the loss was even heavier, but at least it confirmed a lot of things that DIDN'T kill them, so I guess that was worth something.
I've never found any nightshade on that pasture, but I have found buttercup and water hemlock. I've spent a lot of time trying to kill those two plants off since. Also this happened in the few days following the first hard freeze of the year, so I pull the cattle off that pasture immediately after the first freeze now (just in case).
You can't have livestock without dead stock, I guess. | |
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Lost 40 head this morning
