🐄 Common Cattle Diseases & Solutions

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD): blisters on mouth/feet, drooling, lameness, milk drop — hugely contagious. Solution: report immediately (notifiable), quarantine, vaccination in endemic areas, and strict farm biosecurity; it rarely kills adults but devastates production.

Mastitis (udder infection): swollen hot udder, clotted milk, fever. Solution: clean milking hygiene (wash + dry teats, teat dip), treat early with vet-prescribed intramammary antibiotics, milk out the affected quarter, and cull chronically infected cows.

Foot rot / lameness: limping, foul-smelling foot. Solution: regular hoof trimming, dry clean flooring, footbaths (copper sulphate), and treat lesions early.

Bloat: sudden abdominal swelling, distress — an emergency. Solution: prevent with gradual access to lush legume pasture and adequate fibre; emergency relief (stomach tube/rumen puncture by a vet) if severe; anti-bloat agents in feed.

Internal parasites (worms): poor growth, diarrhoea, bottle jaw, rough coat. Solution: strategic deworming (at the right seasons, not random), pasture rotation, and faecal egg counts to target treatment.

Ticks & tick-borne diseases (theileriosis, babesiosis): fever, anaemia, weakness, reduced milk. Solution: tick control (acaricide dipping/spraying on a schedule), avoid grazing in peak tick season, and treat clinical cases promptly with a vet (they are often fatal without it).

Blackquarter (blackleg): sudden lameness, swelling with gas, high fever — usually fatal within 24-48h. Solution: VACCINATION is the answer (annual blackquarter vaccine); carcass disposal; hygiene at injections.

General herd health: clean water, balanced feed, dry bedding, vaccination calendar (FMD, blackquarter, HS), deworming calendar, and observing animals daily — early detection saves herds.

🩺 Real-world view

A cattle farm — herd health management

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