A : Your cow is suffering from a character of sunburn photosensitization . This serious hide condition generally affects nonpigmented skin such as white areas on the animal or cattle with light - colored skin . fateful skin is less affected because it has more auspices from the Sunday ’s rays . Nonpigmented cutis pop off and sloughs out because the legal injury is much deeper than average suntan that affects just the top layers .
pigment in plants that the moo-cow eats have it . If these get into the parentage and travel to the skin , the damage pass when sunlight causes the pigment to fluoresce and “ burn ” the nonpigmented skin .
In cattle , this hyperreactivity of skin to sunlight ’s ultraviolet light ray of light often signals pasture - induced liver disease ( in which the skin problem is junior-grade ) . This is even more serious . The liver is a filter , screening out and excrete harmful center . If the liver ca n’t filter out the plant pigment , those paint enter the blood stream , travel to the hide and react with sunlight to form this bovine sunburn .
Photosensitization can be a elementary condition if a good for you moo-cow eats sure works hold back a picture - sensitizing compound called phylloerythrin . A few plant , let in buckwheat , smartweed and Saint John ’s wort , hold in these photoreactive compound . Buckwheat is sometimes used as a grain crop , and oxen like it . The other photosensitizing plants are considered weeds .
Primary photosensitization can also occur if cattle are put into lush light-green legume lea ( alfalfa , bird’s - invertebrate foot trefoil , cicer milkvetch ) or fed green , leafy alfalfa hay , especially if they have previously been on poor - timbre hay or pasture . The immature plants have so much chlorophyll that it overloads the liver with a flush of phylloerythrin that produces the photosensitization . elementary photosensitization can happen when cattle suddenly switch from a drying agent feed to a lush green provender . The more they exhaust the offending plants , the more suntan damage occurs . If cattle are in the sun without any refinement , it can become a full heaviness burn .
Once removed from the offending feed or pasture and given protection from sunlight ( and fed nonlegume hay ) , dissemble cows can amply recoup from the sunburn — with raw hide growing — over a full stop of several calendar week , if there is no damage to the liver .
If your cow shows signs of photosensitization , get it out of the sunlight and off the feed that caused the problem , then handle the inflaming and any secondary infection . Put the moo-cow in a barn , and let it browse at dark .
If the cutis is severely break through / crusty from the sunburn or it shed aside and leaves raw area , keep tent flap away or maggot will shortly dwell those areas . You might need antibiotic salve to prevent bacterial infection . If her bag and teats are impress , milking or nursing a sura will be atrocious . You might have to apply soothing salve over the cutting domain .
A vet can assure whether the photosensitization is primary or secondary . Generally , if an animal shows severe photosensitization lowly to liver damage , the forecast is poor . There is no effective treatment for severe liver hurt , and the creature will finally pall . In either case , you should investigate what the cow feed and remove that feed from her diet or remove the toxic locoweed or photosensitise plants from your eatage to keep this from happen again .
This story in the beginning appear in the July / August 2018 egress ofHobby Farms .
