Bloat in livestock

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I will now launch one poll question to start today's webinar. This helps us to gauge who is joining us today and to check that all of the webinar program is working correctly. So, I'm just launching a poll now.

Okay, so you should see on your screen a poll that says, "What is your industry role? Are you a sheep producer, a goat producer, a cattle producer, a mixed species producer, or an advisor?"

If you don't see the poll on your screen, you may have to exit the full screen and then answer the poll question. Very good. I'll just give it a couple more seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. I'll close that poll now and share the poll results. So, you can see in the audience here today we have 20 sheep producers, 20 cattle producers, 40 mixed species producers, and 20 advisers.

I will now hand over to Charlotte. Charlotte has been a district vet based at Burke since 2005. Prior to this, Charlotte worked in mixed practice in Cudal and Mundra. So, I'll just change over to you.

[Music]

Charlotte.

Just waiting to view Charlotte's screen. There we go, we have your screen, Charlotte. Okay, great.

So, firstly, this afternoon I'd like to acknowledge the owners, past and present, of the land on which we stand here in Burke. I am on Namba country, but there are many, many nations represented across Western New South Wales. On your screen, you'll see a nice aerial view of the Cutter Burrow Basin up near Yantabula, near Hungerford.

So, this is us, Western Local Land Services region. As you can see, it's pretty big. We're about 42 percent of the state, and we extend right up to the Queensland border, across to the South Australian border, and down to the Victorian border. Consequently, we have a really large range of production and conditions across this region that we deal with.

The majority of our region—sorry about that—the majority of the region is extensive grazing, with property and paddock sizes increasing in the northwest. Most pastures are unimproved native pastures. There is some cropping country in the south and east, either irrigated or non-irrigated, obviously depending on the season. You can see the Darling River system and its associated catchment areas running through the middle. The previous photo of the Cutter Burrow was only taken last week, and it shows that flat-out area in the Cutter Burrow Basin, which is fed by the Paroo and the Warrego, and will be topped up by the weekend's rain.

In general, the majority of our producers will be running stock in very large paddocks, some with groundwater and some with water piped to troughs from rivers or bores. Extensive grazing and groundwater create challenges for grazers for the prevention and control of bloat.

So, what is bloat? The definition of bloat is ruminal tympany, which pertains to being like a drum, or simply distension of the rumen with gas. In that cow on the left, you can see that the left side of the abdomen is distended, which is where the rumen sits. As the disease progresses, they will have distension on both sides of the abdomen. Unfortunately, in our conditions, we often find our cattle looking like the one on the right. So, it's a sudden death syndrome.

Who does it affect? It can affect all different types of species. Dogs get what we call gastric dilatation and then they can get volvulus where the gut actually twists. Humans—I'm sure we've all gorged ourselves at Christmas dinners. Then, of course, ruminants: cattle, sheep, and goats. Cattle, particularly, seem to be affected the most, but it certainly can occur in sheep and goats as well.

The cost to the industry of beef cattle and sheep producers—that's excluding dairy producers—was estimated in 2006 by Suck at al at about 47 million dollars a year. So, that's not just deaths, but also includes cattle that have the disease in its more chronic or subclinical forms, which basically means the bloat situation goes up and down a little bit. In these situations, the animals are not going to be grazing as normal, so there is decreased feed consumption and consequently slower growth rates. The cost also includes treatments, prevention, and, importantly, the inability to utilize highly productive pastures that we've been without for so long.

Just getting back to basics: ruminants basically are just "rumens on legs." As producers, it's very useful to have a basic understanding of how the rumen works, as this is the engine room of our stock. On this diagram, the food comes down the esophagus. The entry point to the rumen is called the cardia, then it goes into the rumen—the largest compartment of the four compartments of the rumen. Then into the reticulum, which, when opened up, the lining looks like honeycomb. Then into the omasum, which is the really solid oval-shaped compartment, and when opened, it looks like leaves—that's pertaining back to the Bible reference. Then into the fourth stomach, which is called the abomasum, which is basically a true stomach, similar to what humans and carnivorous animals have. Then out into the small intestine.

Just got another photo of a cow or picture of a cow here. It's a bit of a dodgy pick, sorry, but you'll get the gist. The rumen occupies a large part of the left side of the abdomen. You can see the layers in the rumen: the fluid fraction down the bottom, the fibre mat of food halfway up, and then generally a gas cap, which sits right up against the diaphragm.

The rumen is normally about the size of a garbage bag. So, when we talk about the requirements of cattle, we talk about them needing to eat like a garbage bag full of food a day. With sheep, we look at the size of a normal shopping bag. When enlarged with gas, it pushes on the diaphragm and suppresses pressure on the lungs and circulation.

There are two types of ruminant bloat: primary and secondary. Primary bloat is also known as frothy bloat, pasture bloat, and clover bloat. Feedlot bloat is also a primary bloat. Secondary bloat is referred to as gaseous bloat, free gas bloat, or dry bloat. In Ethiopia, the term for bloat is buksa, which I thought was a bit cool. There are other historical terms, including hoeven, hoove, tympani, and blow, that you may have heard of.

Primary or frothy bloat generally affects more than one animal in the flock or herd. It's caused by consumption of a highly digestible diet, which passes through digestion quickly and becomes quite slimy, trapping little gas pockets within the rumen content, forming a foam. The analogy I would use here is a beaten egg white.

Secondary or gaseous bloat may only affect individual animals. It's generally a physical issue, preventing gas from escaping—pretty much familiar with "old choke" types of things, such as vegetables, fruit, or even plastic bags that block the esophagus. Other causes include masses pressing on the esophagus, nerve damage, ruminal atony, and positional bloat when a cow lies on its side.

Primary bloat, why does it happen? Essentially, like many problems with nutrition and food for stock, it is generally caused by eating too much too quickly, or a food the gut is not used to. This can also happen with acidosis, pulpy kidney, or nitrate poisoning.

Digestion starts with chewing, saliva, and microbes in the gut. If this gets out of balance, the system doesn’t have time to adjust. Cows are designed to get the most out of an indigestible diet. Digestion starts with physical chewing, increasing surface area. Saliva moistens food, helps digestion, and contains bicarbonate as an acid buffer. Rumen contractions mix food, microbes, and fluids.

Gas is a product of digestion. Highly digestible food decreases the physical work required to break it down. Consequently, byproducts build up quickly: liquid, solids, and gas, mostly methane. Gas is usually released from the rumen through eructation (belching). Failure to release gas causes bloat. Highly digestible feed includes lush pasture, grain, and processed foods like pellets.

In healthy cattle, 30–50 litres of gas are produced every hour, traveling up the esophagus at 160–225 cm per second.

This diagram, by Erica Kennedy, shows the rumen function. Feed comes in via the esophagus and is broken down with microbes. The rumen microbe population changes depending on diet. Streptococcus bovis thrives on low-fibre feed and produces methane. Protozoa, fungi, and bacteria are all working together; when the rumen is unhealthy, these protozoa are absent.

On the left you can see a cow grazing on a lush green paddock. This type of pasture, particularly if it is clover or legumes, can increase the risk of primary bloat because it is highly digestible and produces foam in the rumen. On the right you see the characteristic left side distension in a cow with bloat.

Some of the key risk factors for primary bloat include rapid change from dry feed to lush pasture, pastures with high legume content such as clover or lucerne, fine leafy pastures rather than coarse stemmy pastures, wet conditions which increase pasture digestibility, and high stocking rates which can increase intake per animal.

Secondary bloat as mentioned is more likely to affect individual animals and is often related to physical obstruction. Causes include choke from feed such as whole grains, root vegetables or foreign objects, oesophageal injuries or strictures, masses pressing on the oesophagus, ruminal atony or poor rumen motility often linked to illness, and lateral recumbency where a cow lying on its side cannot eructate efficiently.

Treatment for primary bloat involves rapid intervention. Immediate measures include relieving gas pressure by passing a stomach tube if free gas is present, or using a trocar and cannula if the rumen is severely distended and the animal is in distress. Anti-foaming agents such as poloxalene or vegetable oils can reduce foam in the rumen and allow gas to escape. Adjusting the diet is also important. If possible, gradually introduce lush pasture or mix with hay to reduce the risk of recurrence.

For secondary bloat, treatment focuses on removing the obstruction or addressing the underlying cause. This may involve correcting choke with a stomach tube or gentle manipulation, surgical intervention if a mass or anatomical problem is causing the bloat, or treating rumen atony with appropriate supportive therapy including fluids and prokinetics.

Prevention is always preferable to treatment. For primary bloat this includes gradual introduction of high-risk pastures, providing dry roughage or hay before turning stock onto lush pasture, using anti-foaming agents prophylactically in high-risk situations, and managing pasture composition to avoid sudden increases in clover or legumes.

For secondary bloat prevention involves minimising access to large quantities of choke-inducing feeds, ensuring good pasture management and avoiding sudden feed changes, and maintaining animal health to reduce the risk of rumen motility issues.

It’s important to monitor animals regularly, especially during periods of rapid pasture growth or after significant feed changes. Early detection is critical because bloat can progress very quickly, sometimes resulting in death within a few hours.

In healthy cattle, thirty to fifty litres of gas are produced every hour, travelling up the oesophagus at one hundred and sixty to two hundred and twenty-five centimetres per second.

This diagram by Erica Kennedy shows the rumen function. Feed comes in via the oesophagus and is broken down with microbes. The rumen microbe population changes depending on diet. Streptococcus bovis thrives on low-fibre feed and produces methane. Protozoa, fungi, and bacteria are all working together. When the rumen is unhealthy these protozoa are absent.

Clinical signs of bloat in extensive grazing conditions are often that the majority of affected animals are found dead on their backs or sides with their legs out, with distended abdomens. You may see froth or blood from the nose or mouth or from the back end. Eyes may be protruding.

In animals that are still alive you might see swelling on the left side of the abdomen, reluctance to move, panting, protruding tongue, grunting, kicking at the abdomen, vocalising, or staggering. As the rumen enlarges it puts pressure on the diaphragm, lungs, and circulation, and the animal suffocates.

After death the rumen may show stable foam initially which subsides over time. There may be congestion and haemorrhages in the head, neck, and thorax, and the back end may appear pale. Rib imprints on the lungs may be visible, and a bloat line may be seen in the oesophagus.

Treatment involves moving stock from the paddock gently and dosing with anti-bloating agents through a stomach tube or cannula. Anti-bloat preparations include wetters such as alcohol ethoxylate and oils which break down the foam. 

There’s registered products such as Tympanol and Bloataway, which always should be used as per the label instructions. But in an emergency, when you don’t have access to these, you can use paraffin oil or things like vegetable oils as well.

Some people might give oral penicillin, which is given under veterinary prescription in severe cases. Lots of people talk about being ready or having stabbed animals, and you can do it, but if you remember back to the beaten egg white analogy, you will see that putting a stab in the animal’s rumen is not likely to release a lot of gas or give much relief because of that froth, which will just block the hole from the cannula or the stab incision.

If you do do something like that, they’re going to need some antibiotics and some aftercare. So just a reminder again — this is a cow, this is another one of Nick Cronin’s — but you can just see the sheer amount of rumen content that’s coming out of that cow and how frothy and slimy it is. The air is all trapped within that, and so giving them a stab is probably not going to help.

But if you get it in there and twist your knife and make a big enough hole, you might provide a little bit of relief — enough of a space to actually get some preventative or some treatment in there as well.

So basically, this photo shows a trocar and cannula. These are just a plastic one that we always carried around with us when I was in private practice. They can be sutured in as well for chronic cases where you might need to top up the doses of treatment.

The photo up on the top right there shows the position where you would make that incision — it’s about a hand’s width back from the last rib and a hand’s width down from the spine, which looks all well and good and quite defined in that pic, but obviously when the animal’s bloated it’s a bit trickier.

I’ve just popped a couple of photos of some commercial products in there.

So prevention is probably going to be the best option in our situation in extensive grazing. Essentially, avoidance of high-risk pasture — high-risk pastures are those with fifty percent or more legume content. Post-drought we’ve seen a lot of clover, especially up in this part of the world so far where we’ve had some rain and we’ve had some of that flood-out country in the Warrego and the Paroo, and also due to the fact that some of the grass spots have been decimated in the terribly long drought that we’ve had.

Obviously, the season as well leads to clover growth. So those high-risk legumes are going to be lush and rapidly growing and shorter than that sort of twenty-five to thirty centimetres in height, in what we call the vegetative state — this is before they’re setting flower.

Other risks are high moisture content of the soil, so again in that flood-out country or if we’ve had rain, and we have had some pretty dewy mornings as well, which just keeps that moisture there and helps those plants rapidly grow.

The other thing about dew — there’s a bit of a misconception about the dew making the plants more risky, but perhaps it could be just that the morning grazing is an issue as well, because the soluble protein concentration in the plants, which is what breaks up and creates that slime, is generally highest in the morning.

The other thing is that cattle eat a lot more in the morning as well, so they might just be creating a risk by eating more.

As far as prevention, other methods are to not introduce hungry or empty stock to lush feed. You want to fill them up with hay to decrease the amount that they can eat and give access to roughage, and also to ensure that their clostridial vaccinations are up to date and boosters are given.

With your cattle that’s going to be five-in-one or seven-in-one, and with the sheep the three-in-one through to that six-in-one. I’ve just popped up that graph there that shows how you really need to give both your two initial shots if they haven’t had any vaccinations before, which will give them a longer time of coverage, and then your annual booster.

Just quickly, I’m going to quickly flick back to that one because I had a producer ring me about a needle for bloat. There is no needle for bloat, and I think what people might think is a needle for bloat is your vaccinations, but they’re actually only preventing the clostridial diseases. The seven-in-one and six-in-one have some additions as well, but basically why we’d like you to have those up to date is because pulpy kidney or enterotoxaemia can occur under similar conditions as bloat and can be interchangeable or confused with bloat as well.

This is just some photos from last week up in the Cuttaburra again near Yantabulla, and you can see that that is quite a monoculture there, so it’s a really high-risk pasture. It’s getting up there in height, but it’s still pretty risky. I wouldn’t think that’s more than thirty centimetres high. On the right you can just see there’s some flowers starting to bud up there on that plant, so that could be reducing the risk a little.

A low-risk pasture is one that has a good variety of feed — so legumes and grasses. We like to see less than fifty percent legumes and a leaf-to-stem ratio of less than one to two. Basically what that’s talking about is that those shorter pastures are going to have more leaf, and the leaf is where the chlorophyll is, and the chlorophyll in the leaves is what’s broken down to give those plant particles that trap the gases within the rumen.

Plants in bloom are less likely to cause bloat, but bloat can occur if the animals are hungry and are given access and they’re not used to it. So just like with any change of feed, if you took some animals off a dry area and put them on adjustment or something, you want to introduce them slowly and make sure they’re filled up with hay so they can’t really gorge themselves on that feed.

Despite the fact that it might be over that height and setting flower, frosted and dried-off pasture tends to be lower risk as well.

Um, there are exceptions to the rule. So, these, um, cattle on the left there, you can see, there want the hair fit in the foreground there, but there's two in the background there as well. And if you saw that driving along, you probably wouldn't think that was a very bloaty-looking pasture, but, um, there is quite a bit of clover in there and obviously varied across the paddock. But those three have died in a pretty small area, and I just came across those accidentally when I was going out on a sheep job in May.

And then this photo that we saw before of Bruce Watts, where these cattle are on grazing wheat.

So, other preventatives, we've mentioned: providing stock with, howe, roughage, and then the commercial preventatives, um, would be your licks and your blocks. Now, this might be another time to have another little, um, a poll in a minute. We'll just finish this fire, but basically, I'm just interested in how many people do just simply water from troughs, because that gives another option for preventatives. Basically, you've got your bloat licks, which might have the, um, the wetters in them—so the alcohol extoxylate—and then things like your Weather Pro Drylic, which has monets in it, which is an antibacterial and decreases that streptovis. Um, just to push the point again, there is actually no vaccine or needle for bloat.

So, um, Tanisha, do you want to just run that poll now? Yep, just launching that poll now for everybody.

So, let me know if you can see that poll. So, yep, collecting responses. What's the main water source for livestock on your property? So, we've got tanks and troughs, so that means if you have access to troughing systems. If you only have access to groundwater, for example, rivers, creeks, and ground tanks. And if it's not applicable, you are an advisor. Just wait for a couple of more votes; I can see that there's still some coming in.

Remember that if you cannot answer the poll question, you may need to exit full-screen mode in order to be able to answer the poll.

All right, I'll give it another five seconds and I'll close that poll. Five, four, three, two, one. And I'll just share those results for you, Charlotte, there. So, you can see we've got 57 with access to tanks and troughs, 14 with groundwater being the primary source of water, and 29 advisors, right away.

Okay, so, can you hear me again now? Yes, no worries. Yeah, okay, so yeah, so that gives another option. If your stock are just watering off troughs, it gives you another option for prevention. Um, so you can use some products that float on top of the water, and then obviously, when they drink out of that, they'll be getting, um, dosed with the preventative, which is, which is great. But obviously, if we've got groundwater, we don't have access to that. Um, the thing about these block blocks and the dry licks is they've obviously got to be accessing them, which, um, is difficult with groundwater as well, because it's a bit hard to figure out where to place them. But also, um, we know that stock tend to go for licks and, um, blocks when they're lacking. And when there's nice green feed, they're often not lacking in here, so that's, that's a bit tricky, but it's, um, certainly worth trying. And obviously, you can monitor whether they're accessing it or not.

Um, the other thing is, I've spoken about that stock are unlikely to access the lick blocks or dry licks when there's such nice green feed available. Um, and even like in the, in the picture on the right, you can see that there is a bit of roughage in the paddock, but they're probably going to go for the lush stuff. Um, the one on the right actually is, um, all part of the series of photos of up at the Cutter Borough last week, and you can see that there's a bit of grass coming through as well. So hopefully that will decrease the risk if they choose to graze, um, a bit of both.

Right, all right. So, what else could it be? So, what are other causes of sudden death, um, that we see? So certainly anthrax, um, is always in the forefront of our minds out here in the Western Division. So, um, sorry, that's a bit dodgy with the, because I've blown it up, but you can get the gist of where that anthrax belt's running down the middle there of New South Wales. And certainly this, um, poor ram on the left there was just at Ivanhoe last year, and you can see there that they die—they, um, with that sort of red froth, bloody froth coming out their nose, which you can see in cases of bloat as well.

Um, anthrax affects Catalan sheep quite equally. Um, other causes of sudden death: we had a real doing with nitrate poisoning, um, just after the, we some of the errors got a bit of a break. Um, and that's to do with the nitrogen that's sort of been sitting in the ground with no feed, um, really being sucked up by the plants as they're growing, and then, um, hungry stock being introduced, um, and ending up with nitrate poisoning.

The other one's oxalate poisoning, so that also can depend on the type of feed that they're eating—things like pigweed, tribulus, or cat head—ends up causing hypocalcemia, pulpy kidney, or other clostridial diseases. So all of these, um, cases of sudden death can, will look quite bloated after they've, um, after they've died. And particularly those clostridial diseases, such as anthrax and kidney, um, the carcass will blow up quite a bit, so it's a bit hard to tell the difference if you don't see them actually dying. And you've really got to look, look at the, the other conditions surrounding the deaths, which might be actually similar to what you might see in bloat.

Um, just actually, just quickly, I've just got a note here back to that pulpy kidney issue. So, probably pulpy kidney is actually enterotoxemia or overeating disease. And we always sort of suggest that your vaccinations are up to date in general, but particularly with bloat-prone pastures, because pulpy kidney can occur on similar pastures. But it's actually, um, not happening in the rumen, and it's happening further along in the intestines because the rumen can't digest it enough, the food, and it goes into the intestines, and then you get this proliferation of this clostridial bacteria, and then production of a toxin, which ends up killing the animal.

Another thing I just wanted to mention was red gut and sheep. So, sheep will suffer from just straight-up bloat, like we saw in some of the other photos, but this one's red gut. And look, you're mainly going to see this on loosened pastures, and often, um, mainly in younger sheep. I think this was just a six-month-old sheep actually down in the Tablelands. But what happens is the intestines actually twist, and you get that torsion, and that horrible, um, hemorrhagic sort of mess there that you can see in this poor sheep.

But a few years, or quite a few years ago now, um, the vet that I used to job share with here, Kylie Greentree, she diagnosed red gut in, um, some young Dorper rams that were actually being confinement fed on loose end hay. So, um, yeah, that was interesting as well.

So, as far as, um, ringing the vet or trying to figure out what's going on, sometimes I get these, you know, people telling me that they've had all these deaths, and I'll say, "Why didn't you ring me?"

And, um, a lovely fellow years ago, you said to me up in the Cutter Barra, "We'll pretty much style it with—we're smelling them before we're seeing them," which is true in that, in that lignum and in those big paddocks. But, um, there are things that we can do, um, up to almost, up to a week, pretty much, to rule out anthrax, which is what we always want to do, um, in this area initially.

A fresher, like preferably a fresh animal, is great for postmortem. We can get a lot of information from postmortem, and when I say fresh, I mean in that same day, um, is best. So, as soon as you find it, ring the vet.

Um, so things like this ICT kit, which we can get an answer whether or not it's anthrax or not while we're standing next to the animals—really fantastic. And then we can go on and do a post-mortem if we've ruled out anthrax. That one's actually a positive one; it was from that ram that we saw. But then, as long as we can get some eye fluid—so often we can get eye fluid out of the downside eye—we can rule out things like nitrate poisoning, acidosis, and hypocalcemia actually as well. There's quite a bit of information we can get from the eye fluid.

And then, in older carcasses, we can still rule out anthrax, um, using a piece of ear. So we send that ear off to the lab, and there's a different test that they can do that's quite sensitive, um, to rule out anthrax. So just always call the vet, um, and that might prevent some further deaths. But importantly, things like anthrax are zoonotic, so they can affect humans. So we don't want to, um, run into that situation.

Okay, so that wraps up the bloat part of the webinar. Tanisha did ask me just to talk about some other issues to look out for, so I'll quickly touch on a couple.

As I've mentioned, we've had some nice rain over the weekend, and the weather will start to warm up soon, which means that conditions will become ideal for worms — intestinal worms — either scour worms or Barber’s Pole worms.

The message in Western New South Wales is: don’t reach for the drench, but do a worm test first. These worm test kits are available from all the Local Land Services offices, and we can post them out to you for free. You can just have them sitting in your cupboard until you think you need them.

Once you send them off and fill out the form, they’ll email an invoice to you. I think the cheapest one is about thirty-six dollars, and then you can go right up to the gold test with typing, which works out to be about eighty dollars — which is pretty cheap compared to buying sheep drench.

We don't really encourage drenching out here unless we really need to, and then the results will come through to the vet — either Trento or myself — and we will normally give you a call and go over the results and help you interpret them.

Basically, these little larvae — so you've got your sheep, and that sheds the eggs, and then that goes through a couple of stages of larvae — are very resilient. Even though we've had quite a lot of drought years and dry conditions, they can survive in little refuges in your paddocks, and then once the weather warms up and we've got the moisture and grass, they go through the stages to the infective stage and crawl up the grass and infect your sheep.

With scour worms, you usually get a few clues first — you might see some scouring or a bit of weight loss. Barber’s Pole worm can lay a hell of a lot of eggs in a day, so things move pretty quickly there.

With the worm test, you don’t have to have the sheep in. Usually, I recommend that you do it leading up to having the stock in for shearing or crutching or something like that. You just go out to the paddock where they’re camped up, disturb them, and they’ll usually drop some fresh dung. You can collect ten pellets’ worth of poo and send it straight off in the mail back in the prepaid bag.

That’s something to look out for.

The other one is just a reminder to get your clostridial vaccinations up to date. With sheep, there are a couple of options — your five-in-one, which is just your five clostridial diseases: tetanus, pulpy kidney, blackleg, black disease, and malignant edema. But you do have the option, for a little bit of extra money, to get the six-in-one, which will cover you for the cheesy gland as well.

We’ve looked at our abattoir data from Western New South Wales. Every year we get a report, and the cheesy gland is one of the largest reasons for trim at the abattoir.

You can have a look in this photo of this sheep lung — this was actually pretty recent, near Burke — and you can see that big cheesy gland abscess sitting in the lungs. Those lungs were a mess, actually; they were really stuck to the ribcage, and it’s obviously not helping growth rates or the general health of that animal.

These are just some rough prices that I was given recently by one of the agents. There are obviously different brands and different size packs which will change the pricing, but just to give you an idea of the cost difference between using a five-in-one and a six-in-one.

With cattle, there’s the five-in-one or the seven-in-one, which will do your lepto as well.

I think that is it from me. My number’s on the slide there. Trent McCarthy’s our vet down at Baronga — he’s on leave for a few weeks, but his number is there. If you’re not in Western, or even if you are, you can access the website and look up all the vets to contact or biosecurity officers.

And if ever in doubt, just ring the Disease Watch Hotline, which you can plug into your phone.

That is it from me.

Thanks, Tanisha. Great — thank you, Charlotte. That was a really great summary of the risks, treatment options, and prevention methods of bloat in our region.

I’ll just change the screen back to my screen, and then we’ll go through some questions.

Just a reminder to the audience: if you have any questions, please type them in the questions box.

While we’re waiting, I do have a couple of questions for you, Charlotte.

Okay, the first one is: How can I avoid bloat in bottle-fed lambs, if this is a risk?

Ah, okay — I was going to touch on that. We do see bloat in bottle-fed lambs, and that’s actually not in their rumen.

Basically, when lambs are born, there’s a process that happens when they’re sucking from their mothers that means the milk bypasses the rumen until the rumen gets a chance to develop. The rumen starts to develop when the lambs are eating more grass or solid feed.

What happens with poddy lambs is that they basically gorge themselves, waggle their tails, and drink a lot of milk. That reflex can be disrupted a little bit, but essentially they get too much into their abomasum, which is that true stomach, and then the bloating process happens because of bacteria and other factors there as well.

So, the idea is to not give them as much in one go — that’s essentially what it comes down to. I know that’s hard, but work out how much they need per day and divide it up. Initially, give them more feeds per day, and as they get bigger and stronger and their stomachs develop properly, you can reduce the frequency.

I can dig up some more information if that person wants to email me.

Yep, no worries. The next question we have is: Is the trough treatment safe for other stock?

Yes — basically, if you had cattle and sheep in a paddock, that would be fine. I don’t know about if you had horses in there; I probably wouldn’t be putting horses in the paddock with that trough treatment.

The treatments are the oily type, so they float on the water, and you might have some with wetting agents as well to decrease the froth. They’re not going to be registered for horses, but for ruminants I’m sure they’ll be fine. Essentially, they’re commercial treatments.

They’ll have all the information on the side, and you need to use them only in the animals that they’re registered for.

Okay, thank you. One last question — a reminder, if anyone’s got any last questions, just type them in. While we’re waiting, there has been a question, Charlotte: Why does the dead animal go red at the head end? Can you just recap that briefly?

Yep, for sure. I’ll just see if I can find— oh, I don’t know if I can go back to it. But basically, when the rumen gets enlarged with gas, it puts extreme pressure on the diaphragm, and that places pressure on the lungs and all the organs around there.

It can happen very quickly in really acute cases of bloat. All that pressure stops the blood returning back through the rest of the animal, so it all gets trapped up in that head end. That’s when you get that really distinct bloat line.

Thank you — that’s really interesting. There’s quite a bit to bloat; it’s quite a complex issue that’s often overlooked, I believe.

Yeah, it actually is complex. For us out here, it gets a little less complex in that the preventative options aren’t as great, but there has been pressure on Meat & Livestock Australia to put more money into researching bloat. It’ll be interesting to see where that goes.

Definitely. Thank you very much, Charlotte, for your time this afternoon, and thank you all for attending today’s webinar.

I’ll just ask that everyone please take the time to complete the post-webinar survey — it’s a great way to provide feedback and guide any future events or webinars you’d like to see.

If you have any questions, please feel free, as Charlotte said, to contact either Charlotte or myself. You’ll receive a follow-up email tomorrow with a link to the recording of this webinar, and that will have my details on it as well.

Thank you, everyone, for attending.