Posted on 11/03/2008 12:23:45 PM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
The cause of death for 100 horses that died last month at a breeding farm outside Summerfield appears to be botulism, according to some of the tests done on the dead animals and their feed.
Although more tests will be done and more samples were sent to labs last week, the preliminary test results indicate that the toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum was what caused the horses at EquiTransfer to suffer nervous system damage, said veterinarian Mike Short, with the state veterinarian's office, which is part of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
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The hay the farm fed the horses was the suspected source of the contamination, Short said.
The horses were fed haylege, which is grass that is cut and wrapped and allowed to ferment. Haylege is conducive to the deadly bacteria's growth if not handled correctly. Short said tests on the haylege indicated the pH was not as low as it should have been in order to deter the botulism-producing bacteria from growing.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocala.com ...
Hay that is moldy or hay that is put up with dried little dead animals in it is also conducive to botulism.
Hay that is moldy or hay that is put up with dried little dead animals in it is also conducive to botulism.
Good grief, why would anyone want to feed their horses moldy hay?
When hay gets wet, I thought it was generally considered to be unusable. We never used it on our farm.
You get it out of the field ASAP once it’s rolled, to avoid rain and this very eventuality.
Is there something new here that I am unaware of?
Not true, most hay sits around in a field until it is fed, it gets rained on every time it rains. not sure why it not moldy from one end to the other, but live on a small farm on weekends, and I see the hay sitting out their every day, all year long. And not just that farm, all over the country side. Farms don’t have anywhere near the number and size of buildings it would take to keep their hay dry.
haylage is the something new...they feed it almost exclusively rather than dry hay on the dairy farm that my brother works on...when you have a large operation you cannot count on enough dry days to make the required amount of dry hay...
it is essentially corn silage except made from hay...it has been cut and allowed to partially dry and then chopped and stored in either a vertical silo, bunker silo, or silage bag...
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it.
In Florida it rains almost every day from the end of June until early October.
I have noticed...
The inclusion of “little dead animals” is my bet for the source of the botulism.
In Nevada, we had a hay producer get notice of his hay killing 22 dairy cows from botulism. The source was a feral cat that had gone through a rotary mower/conditioner and been baled up into a 1-ton (4x4x8’ bale). The large bales are nearly air-tight on the inside, which is why they require very well cured hay (moisture no higher than 12%) in alfalfa to bale without mold.
Every botulism case in the west that I’ve heard of ended up going back to critters being baled up, especially in large bales.
There is also now haylage in wrapped bales. They bale the high-moisture hay (> 40% moisture) and then they wrap the bales in plastic wrap immediately. This is pretty popular with round bales, but there are now wrappers for large square bales.
Imagine taking that Ag-Bag plastic, putting it on a roll and wrapping it around a bale tightly, white on the outside, just like the AgBag idea, only on individual bales.
A farm were I worked had just gotten a brand new discbine a number of years ago...it caught a possum out in the field...that was the biggest bloody mess from a varmint that I had ever seen...that thing was so powerful, the guy on the tractor didn’t know he had hit the possum til he made the next pass and saw it...if you’re working in the dark, you may never see it...
I hadn’t heard of that one...will need to ask my brother as I am currently quite far removed from dairyland...:(
Contaminated Beefareeno?
You’re right. The problem with the discbines (and the self-propelled disc machines) is that you’re moving at nearly double the speed of the old sickle machines (nearly 9mph vs. 4.5 to 5mph).
9 MPH sounds really slow to someone who hasn’t operated farm equipment — to someone who is sitting in a disc mower cab for the first time, trying to keep an eye on everything all at once — it is nerve-rattling.
We had a 15’ disc mower-conditioner that was driven by a 160HP tractor. We could *fly* through a pivot of alfalfa - at almost 10MPH. I once sucked a couple of jackrabbits through that machine so doggone fast that you would have thought I was driving a monster vacuum cleaner. It took me an hour to pick all the crap out of the windrow.
Anyone who raises a horse will get very cautious with feeding because they have some bad habits and are very sensitive to sour hay. If they don't die, the vet bills will teach you to watch for this sort of stuff.
In the fall, it seems like they get into the most trouble and I can't tell you that this ranch did all the right things and just made a one time mistake or if this field was a temporary holding area that may have had cows in it before, which if known is a no-no.
A hundred horse kill is a big loss, assuming the horses were valuable. If not, they may have been mistreated and your assumptions of something amiss may be correct.
I just can't say.......Some States have regulated the horse trade into a a sort of mandatory old folks home for useless horses that eat deep into a ranch's bottom line and they are forbidden to sell them off as meat or whatever. This has caused a lot of problems for ranchers. It is government's attempt to pacify the do-gooder city folks, (PETA types) that ends up in the actual mistreatment occurring. The horse in this country is in danger, as are mules and any other large and even small animal. The Peta folks are having regulations passed that often have dire consequences for these animals, and ranchers have little leeway in how to deal with it.
It could be that these horses were set to pasture and that little effort was made because of their lack of value. Normally these horses would find their way to a slaughterhouse, but recently, they are being saved by people who are actually causing them to be mistreated and killed by natural causes because the owners have no other recourse as they cannot even shoot them to put them out of their misery. No rancher can afford to feed hundreds of useless animals and some were caught holding the bag when the slaughter houses closed in many states.
It is what it is. I would hope people consider this when sending money to these groups or backing a animal rights initiative. In the end, then animal will pay that price. They always do. It is far better for them to be humanely slaughtered and the meat and carcass used for export and consumption. To allow them to die from bad food or from exposure is sometimes the only option left to a rancher. I have seen this happen and nobody is happy about it. The rancher most of all.
Ping
This is a serious problem, but in this case the horses were valuable, acting as incubators for implanted embryos of extremely valuable horses.
Thanks for the info....
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