KEEPING PASTURES SAFE

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Preventing "grass founder," or any form of founder, is critical. Don't turn ponies, draft horses, or even light horses with draft-type characteristics from barn feed to unrestricted lush grass pasture. Avoid sudden changes in feeding, and reduce grain intake on horse heavily worked and laid up for a day without exercise. Don't give a hot horse grain, and only give your horse small amounts of water at a time until it is cooled out.

For first aid, think cold. Either stand the horse in cold water or wrap its feet with burlap bags soaked in cold water. Be sure to get veterinary help immediately. Some acute cases of founder will be lost regardless of treatment, so make prevention top priority. Until a few years ago, many horse with chronic laminitis were permanent cripples. Today skilled farmers and veterinarians, using painkillers, hoof surgery, and epoxy fillers all help greatly, and bring some horses back to complete functioning.

Q. Last spring our family cow stopped eating her grain, just a few weeks after we turned her out to pasture. I thought this was because she was so full of grass. She came in one evening with her udder nearly empty, and only a few squirts of thick milk came out of each quarter. One neighbor said she had mastitis and suggested I treat her with mastitis syringes from the feed store. I did this, but her udder stayed soft and slack. She didn't give enough milk, so I dried her off. A few weeks later she aborted a five-month calf. We fattened her and butchered her last fall, and bought a nice little Jersey for milk.

Another neighbor, who used to dairy farm years ago, told me the first cow didn't have mastitis since her udder was not hard and swollen. He said it was "buttercup poisoning," common in areas with lots of blooming buttercups. Our new Jersey cow is milking fine, and has become a family pet. Soon we will run out of hay, and will need to use the pasture where the buttercups grow. Any suggestions?

A. It sounds as though your first cow had a case of leptospiroses infection. "Lepto" is about the only generalized disease that a lone cow will come down with despite direct/indirect contact with other cattle. The causative agent is not buttercups, but a bacteria carried by any number of wild and domestic animal species. The organism is present in the urine of recovered individuals, and can live outside their bodies in still water above 65°F.

Leptospira organisms can reach a small pond or puddle from the urine of a carrier animal. If your animal drinks the water, it becomes susceptible. Although the organism will most likely die when your animal ingests it, it is infective if sprayed into your animal's nostril or eye.

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