Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Michael Woodhouse — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:07:11 GMT

Does anyone vaccinate Tups with Enzovax? Never thought of doing so.

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Wren — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:59:06 GMT

[quote user="James Kerr"]

As I understand it (and I am no expert, I freely admit!), Chlamydia from infected semen is likely to result in early embryonic death, whereas later abortions are more likely to come from non-venereal routes (including possibly sheep). Oxytet probably works quite well, except there's an issue with timing! You'd presumably need to cover all of them right up until calving, sounds expensive (how many of them, how soon are they due to calve?).

[/quote]

About another 50 to calve over the next 2-3 months. However he hasn't had any more abortions for the moment so I think we'll sit tight. I ws just interested to know whether anyone else had dealt with a case and what the outcome was.

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Richard Fox — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:01:07 GMT

"Indeed, chronic infection of
the male reproductive tract has been demonstrated in
12-month-old rams born to experimentally infected
ewes; in such cases, C. abortus was isolated from semen,
testes and accessory sex glands (Rodolakis and
Bernard, 1977). Regardless of the possibility of venereal
transmission, the ability of C. abortus to infect
male genital tissues and affect the quality of semen in
both bulls and rams (Storz et al., 1968, 1976; Jaskowski
et al., 1979) implies a potential role in bovine and ovine
infertility."

"Intracellular bacteria with developmental stages
similar to those of the Chlamydiaceae were observed
by electron microscopy in free-living amoebae
(Fritsche et al., 1993; Michel et al., 1994), as a cell
culture contaminant (micro-organism Z) (Kahane
et al., 1993) and in an aborted bovine fetus (microorganism
WSU 86-1044) (Dilbeck et al., 1990; Kocan
et al., 1990)."

J Comp Pathol. 2003 May;128(4):217-44.

Animal chlamydioses and zoonotic implications.

Longbottom D, Coulter LJ.

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

James Kerr — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:16:31 GMT

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Edward Jones — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:34:41 GMT

Am I wrong in thinking that if there is a problem brewing, then the bull would probably be at the heart of it?

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Wren — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:09:14 GMT

Bull

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Edward Jones — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:43:48 GMT

Bull or AI?

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Hannah Wynne Richards — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:11:57 GMT

Problem as I see it is " you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't "

Inject, no more abortions, and farmer complains about waste of money

Don't inject and more abortions, and farmer complains you're useless

Worse case scenario of all, inject and abortions continue !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wynne

Re: Chlamydia abortion in cattle

Michael Woodhouse — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:06:21 GMT

Very interesting case there! What stage was the cow when she aborted?

I suppose the best we can hope to do is extrapolate from sheep?

Infection from another ewe, lays dormant until the next pregnancy [suppose this assumes sheep all lamb at once, so may be possible to infect earlier and lay dormant?]. The bacterium reactivate from day 90. A sheep is pregnant 147 days so that's approximately 171 days gestation in the cow [pro-rata]. I do know that antibiotic given before the 90 days in ineffective and in the case of an outbreak in a sheep flock long acting oxytet may need to be repeated after a fortnight.

If you have had one case of a sporadic cause not sure I would do anything. My fear would be you'd waste your money treating them as you'd likely be injecting at the wrong time [since we don't know what the right time is]! You might not get another case anyway. That said going in now and injecting the cows might be spectacularly effective and stop any more abortions......................