Scours is a term for diarrhea; another term that may be applied to this disease is enteritis, which means inflammation of the intestinal tract. Cattle of any age can develop diarrhea, however, most cases of calf scours occur in the first month of life. There are a variety of causes of scours in baby calves. Most of these are infectious agents:
Scours: often caused by more than one of these infectious agents acting together.Research has shown that a substantial proportion of normal, healthy-appearing adult cattle can shed many of the infectious agents that cause calf scours. This shedding is particularly common for rotavirus, coronavirus, and cryptosporidium.Studies have demonstrated that many pathogens responsible for scours are shed in the normal-appearing feces of healthy, pregnant beef cows and shedding increases as the pregnant cows approached their calving date. Further, healthy older calves can become infected with these agents, remain otherwise healthy, and shed large numbers of these agents into the environment, thereby contributing to accumulation of these agents in high enough numbers on a farm that a calf scours outbreak occurs. In the end, calves become exposed to scour-causing pathogens from the fecal contaminated environment. If some of these infectious agents are commonly shed by healthy cows, why do scours outbreaks occur on one farm but not another, and vary in occurrence from year to year on the same farm?This variability in the incidence of scours from farm to farm and year to year likely reflects the fact that the rate of occurrence is influenced by many different factors. With respect to scours these factors may include:
Adapted from Michigan State University Extension.Understanding Calf Scours for Cow– Calf Producers (2014) http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/understanding_calf_scours_for_cow_calf_producers_part_1
Adapted by Jason Detzel, Livestock Educator, CCE Ulster County
Last updated July 26, 2019