o/t dead cow

found one of my cows dead this morning,she was just fine last night at 7 pm,eating hay acting normal,never had a cow die that fast without showing something wrong,she is 7 years old,I'm thinking heart attack? been around cattle for my whole life (49 years)never seen one die so fast.

only way to know how is call a vet and have her autopsied.

A couple yrs back,we had a rash of livestock shooting around here.No rhyme or reason,just townie teens"having fun".When caught,even they,couldn't explain why,but several folks in fairly wide area lost cattle,sheep,horses,even a couple Alpacas. Not sayin thats whatcha got but I'd check the carcass.Your correct in that cattle don't just fall over dead w/o symtoms.

was she on her side to long and not be able to get up to expend gas? Sometimes this happends fast and there seems to be no logical reason for it. Just a thought I had one do that before.

I've lost a couple cows like that before from "grass tetany" but that happened from eating new grass in the spring. Vet said to use minerial with magnesium in it.
Bob

Did you have any lightning last night?

Do you have, what we call around here, horse apples or osage oranges, or any other thing that could cause choke?

Bullet wounds?

Now that you think about it, are there any signs of illness that she was having such as labored breathing, neurological signs, etc?

Had that same type of thing happen to a cow last year, did have some blood from mouth and nose. Figured possibly an anurism (Sp?) of some type. We had been out amongst the cows about noon, and she was stone dead at 4 p.m. I always figure if humans can have problems, cows can too.

I had a cow fall right over dead in the stanchion barn one night after we milked her.She stood on the end and we were about half way down the barn milking when her feet slipped off in the gutter and she started thrashing trying to get back up out of there. She just kind of settled down and quit trying. Somebody headed in to the milkhouse after a few minutes for something and I told them to give her a kick and get her up out of there. There wasn't any getting her up,she was dead as a doornail. Figured it was a heart attack.

Hate when that happens. A few years ago we had one that we payed a very LARGE sum for and we had a storm one night. She took cover under a tree line and got hit by lightning. It boiled her in her skin and blew her hoofs off about 5 feet away from her body. I've got her head in the garage now. You might check and see if theres blood here and there. we had one this last summer get her tail stepped on and it broke it and was squirtin a lot of blood everywhere. We got her in the headgate and quit it bleedin luckily.

Hey Lefty so tell me whats the differance between the "townies" killing them or you killing them other than your out some money and if they had to die at least they died more humanely rather than being sent to slaughter and you know it as well as I do to that the ride alone is enough to kill them.

When I was a kid, we had a 200-300 pound steer calf suddenly die overnight. My Dad and I carefully examined his carcass, but could find no external wound. So we opened him up and did our own autopsy. What we finally found was that he had apparently eaten some plastic sheeting, and that caused an intestinal blockage. My guess was that he was in quite a bit of pain that last few hours.

We were both experienced with butchering, so doing the autopsy was not too bad, other than dealing with the stiffness of rigor mortis. If the animal has not been dead very long, there is little problem with bad smell, but I suppose not everyone could do the job like we did. I don't know what a Vet would charge to do an autopsy, but it would sure be nice to know what killed the animal. We were poor, and I don't think my Dad ever really considered calling the Vet. We were pretty pleased that we were able to find something obviously wrong with the steer. I doubt that we could have detected a heart attack or blood clot problem, since we really didn't have the training to know what to look for.

We decided that the steer must have got hold of the plastic sheeting in our barn, where my Mom had brought some food scraps out to the barn cats and left the wrapper. We were lots more careful about leaving potential hazards around after that, but my Mom had just not considered the plastic as a problem. A learning experience for our family.

That"s how stupid town people are they think that cows gong to slaughter is in humane. Tell me what the hell else your going to do with them keep em as pets and anybody stupid enough to think it"s better to have somebody shoot cows than send them to slaughter must be a real idiot

To add to your response to DB53's ignorant post(probably one of the dumbest things I've ever read on here).... when he asks what's the difference between having townies kill them and sending them to slaughter? Anyone who's ever had to shoot an injured cow(or horse) knows that there's only a very small area where you shoot them for a quick painless death.

Very slim chance of some kid shooting from the road being able to hit that specific spot. Most likely they'd get hit somewhere else and die a slow painful death due to loss of blood/internal bleeding.

Kinda reminds me of Larry the Cable guy's joke where he says he has a horse with a broken leg and the vet said to shoot the horse..."now I got me a horse with a broken leg and a bullet wound".

Paying a vet to do an autopsy is a colossal waste of money. With as tight as things are in the cattle business, it's best to cut your losses and move on.

Heck, it's going to be bad enough that you have to pay the rendering plant to come take her away.

boy! ya'll have been lucky if you've never had a animal drop dead on you in 49 years!LOL..lets see ,just a short list of what ive seen kill one in a matter of hours,minutes or seconds,,lightning,bloat,medicated feed or regular feed taken out of a bin and put in a medicated feed sack will kill them sometimes in literally seconds(really bad for horses,never let a horse anywhere near medicated feed for cattle they will fall dead sometimes.even a medicated feed sack has enough residue on it to kill a horse if hes particularly suceptable),acid poisoning,stress,trouble birthing,heat,cold,old age,blockages( always take the strings off your bales if you feed round bales,cows will eat them ,and drop dead in mid stride),tuberculosis or blown lungs like the fellow who said he saw blood coming out of mouth and nose will kill one dead in a second or they might get ok, simply fall down and cant get legs back under them to get up will kill one,as will two old cows fighting and one gets too hot, and probably 10,000 other things.. only thing you can bet on,if you keep animals you'll have a dead one now and again..they are in my opinion just like us,when its your time,,

and another one I forgot,do you have a horse in the pasture with your cows? a horse will sometimes kill cattle simply out of sheer boredom.Especialy one thats been used to herd cattle.They know the cattle will run from them,and they simply run them until they cant run no more.Then they will either bite,or kick it to death.Ive seen them pick up a young calf in their teeth that they had run until exhausted,and throw it ten feet in the air trying to make it run some more.since horses knows to bite each other on the back of the neck while fighting,lots of time these types of deals gets blamed on other things like bobcats or cougars who bite the spine to kill prey.

Stupid people like that is what makes farming harder and it will only get worse I'm afraid , anybody that thinks shooting livestock for fun and have the animal go to waste rather than go to slaughter and let somebody get some use out of it must have there head up there a$$ .