Diagnosing Daisy's Lame Foot

Daisy is the matriarch of Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  She's the oldest Jersey cow on our farm and will turn 8 years old in June.  When we purchased her, she came alongside her mom, Buttercup. Daisy makes delicious milk with thick cream. She is a bossy, headstrong cow, but she's like a member of the family.

We know our animals and watch them closely to assess their behavior.  The other day we noticed that she was limping a little bit and could tell that she was favoring her back leg on her left side.  We had to take a look and see what the problem was and determine how to treat it.  This sometimes proves to be tricky on a large animal.  If a cow kicks you, it can be a painful and dangerous situation.  We have a nifty device called "Kow Kan't Kick" that we use for this purpose.

You can see it in the photo below.  You slip it over her backbone and it has two arms that go right in her 'armpits.'  Then you crank it tight with the crank on top.  This disables her ability to kick.

Kow Kan't Kick

We pulled the rope tight to ensure she didn't have slack.  She is known for making trouble.  Of course she immediately got all nervous when I put the Kow Kan't Kick apparatus on her and you can see above that she lifted her tail and immediately pooped and peed to let us know she was not appreciative of this loss of freedom.

Cut me some slack

Tricia held her steady because with the device on, they lose their balance.  While Tricia held Daisy upright, I got behind her and lifted her hoof.  Yep, just as I suspected, Daisy has a touch of foot rot. We have had wet, muddy conditions for several weeks and that contributes to the problem that is caused by an organism called Fusiformis necrophorus.  I learned that from reading Keeping a Family Cow by Joann S. Grohman.  It is a great book that teaches you everything you need to know about tending to your family cow.

Foot rot is a pretty easy condition to treat for sheep and goats and I've treated many of them. Fortunately, we caught Daisy's problem early.  It wasn't pus-filled and didn't stink.  It was just tender and sore.  Well, we are going to do what we can to remedy the situation.  First, while I had her leg up, I cleaned out the area between her hooves with a knife, checking to see that there wasn't a nail, wire, rock or stick causing the tenderness.  Nope.  Funny thing is, it didn't stink.  Goats feet stink horribly when they have this ailment.  It was clear to see where the problem was. You can see below on the back of her foot, the skin area is decomposing a little bit, pulling away from the hooves.

Daisy's foot rot

The best way we've found to treat it is to liberally spray down the area with Iodine. This antiseptic will clean up the area and disinfect it.  We've seen it work its magic overnight on Annie the goat.  I held Daisy's foot up and sprayed the hoof area real good.

Iodine

We will check on her again tomorrow and treat her again until we can't notice a limp.  Cows need to be able to walk about and eat hay and grass and not be limited by an ailing foot  We've got to get things fixed soon.  Dry weather would help as well, although I see we're expecting rain again next week.  

Hopefully Daisy will be walking better on her leg tomorrow after the treatment.