- Author: Devii R. Rao
UC Cooperative Extension in collaboration with UC Davis Veterinary Medicine is excited to offer series of free online webinars for cattle producers. Every Tuesday evening in March from 5:30-7:00 we will have guest speaker presenting with a question and answer session, covering topics important to cattle health and management. This session will be live and will include lots of visuals.
Please register for one or all session by clicking here.
For questions or assistance please contact Tracy Schohr, livestock and natural resources advisor for Plumas, Sierra and Butte Counties at tkschohr@ucanr.edu or 916-716-2643.
March 1, 2022
Whole Herd Health Plans – Vaccination Schedules
Dr. Talbot and Dr. Gabriele Maier
Have questions on your beef cattle whole herd health plan? Join us for a free, live, online webinar focused on cattle vaccination programs. Veterinarians will discuss calf, pre-weaning, and annual cow vaccination programs. We will also touch on essential mineral supplements to consider and local vaccination variances. There will also be a question and answer session with Dr. Gabriele Maier, DVM, Cooperative Extension Specialist in Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis and Dr. Tom Talbot a large animal veterinarian in Bishop, Calif.
March 8, 2022
Pink Eye in Cattle
Dr. John Angelos, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
This webinar will focus on an overview of the biology and management of bovine pinkeye. John Angelos, professor and chair, Department of Medicine and Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine will discuss cattle eye anatomy, pinkeye disease progression, and decision-making for developing treatment plans and prevention programs.
March 15, 2022
Toxic Plants and Livestock
Robert H. Poppenga, DVM, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
Learn what plants you should look for in your hay, pasture and on rangelands - you can't rely on your livestock to avoid toxic plants! Dr. Poppenga will provide insight into a variety of plant toxins along with their effects on domestic animals. He will also share cases of typical livestock poisoning and symptoms to watch for.
March 22, 2022
"Herd Bull Health, Diseases and Injuries"
Bret McNabb, DVM, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
Herd bulls are the central component of the success for cow-calf producers. Dr. McNabb will share key strategies to keep your bulls healthy and prevent diseases. He will also discuss common bull injuries and feasibility of treatment options.
March 29, 2022
Why did it Die?
Dr. Gabriele Maier, DVM, Cooperative Extension Specialist in Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis and Dr. Katherine Watson, Pathologist at UC Davis
When raising cattle, you can often be faced with losses that seem like a mystery. Dr. Gabriele Maier, DVM, Cooperative Extension Specialist in Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis and Dr. Katherine Watson, Pathologist at UC Davis will discuss submitting samples to the California Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS) Lab to find answers to why did it die. They will also share unique cases the CAHFS Lab have helped cattle producers identify to improve herd health and management.
Click here for the flyer.
2022-03 Beef Cattel Health Webinar Series
- Author: Devii R. Rao
Join UCCE for the 2022 Irrigation and Nutrient Management Meeting
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Register to join us for this webinar: https://surveys.ucanr.edu/survey.cfm?surveynumber=36536 Virtual Meeting registration cost: $10
Zoom Log-in info will be sent closer to the event date For more info, contact: anrprogramsupport@ucanr.edu, 530-750-1361 (messages only)
Continuing Education Units
California DPR: 1 unit (applied for) CCA: Nutrient Management (1), Soil & Water Management (2.5)
Click here for agenda and more information in English.
Click here for agenda and more information in Spanish.
Here's the registration link: https://surveys.ucanr.edu/survey.cfm?surveynumber=36536.
MASTER Agenda Irrigation and Nutrient Mgmt Meeting Feb 23 2022
MASTER spanish Agenda Irrigation and Nutrient Mgmt Meeting Feb 23 2022
- Author: Devii R. Rao
Are you interested in working with 4-H and having a career with the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE)? UCCE is hiring nine 4-H Supervisor positions across the state. There will be one position that covers Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties. Click here for a flyer with information and links to apply for each position. The application deadline is January 31, 2022. Apply now!
4-H CE Sup 1 Recruitment Letter
- Author: Devii R. Rao
During 2021, we also conducted our first two prescribed burns and came up with a name for ourselves, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association (CCPBA). Our email list consists of nearly 500 people who are interested in learning about and conducting prescribed burns in the tri-county area.
For more information about the CCPBA, click here.
In November 2021, the CCPBA was awarded a second grant from CAL FIRE in the amount of $705,000 to increase the capacity of the PBA. Both grants run through March 15, 2024. Through this second grant, we will
- Increase Jared's hours to full time
- Do more outreach and ranch site visits
- Hire a part-time assistant to help with outreach, including in Spanish
- Develop apprenticeship program for tribal members
- Conduct 4 more prescribed burns
- Coordinate a CalTREX (a two-week intensive prescribed fire training)
- Write 10 burn plans for private ranchers (5 burn plans have already been spoken for, but 5 remain available)
- Purchase a 525 gallon water trailer and some personal protective equipment (PPE)
If you are a rancher who is interested in doing a prescribed burn on your ranch, we can get you set up with a free burn plan, which is the first step toward doing burn. Please click here to see a flyer with details about how to get a burn plan for your ranch.
For questions about the CCPBA or to get involved, contact Jared Childress at childress.ember@gmail.com or 510-499-1496.
CCPBA BurnPlanFlyer
DRAFT CCPBA Flyer
- Author: Gabriele U Maier
- Author: Robert Poppenga
The atmospheric river event in October of 2021 followed by mild temperatures in northern California turned many grasslands green but may have also resulted in advantageous growing conditions for many types of mushrooms. Different species of mushrooms have a particular growing season between fall and spring, but overall, they require moisture to grow, which we now finally have. If you encounter lots of mushrooms where cattle graze, you may wonder whether they can pose a danger to your livestock. As with many other poisonous plants (although mushrooms are technically not plants), cattle will avoid them if other food sources are available, but occasional accidental ingestions can occur, and it doesn't take much to cause problems.
There have been two documented cases of mushroom poisoning in beef calves in California a few years back in 2008 and 2009. In both calves that died from mushroom poisoning, amanitin, the toxic substance that is found in three different genera of mushrooms Amanita, Galerina, and Lepiota, was detected. The calves were from Sonoma and Napa counties and both were found dead without any previous signs of illness.
The most common species of amanita containing poisonous mushrooms along the West Coast are Amanita phalloides (Death Cap) and Amanita ocreata (Destroying Angel). Death Cap is common in the San Francisco Bay area and along the Pacific Coast and is abundant in warm, wet years. It is found close to oak, birch, and pine trees, but can also be found in open pastures in the Central Valley. The Destroying Angel occurs all the way from Baja California along the Pacific coast to Washington and is commonly found in the foothills and valley floor of California's Central Valley.
Poisonings from amanitin have also occurred in people, dogs, and horses. The poison is extremely potent, and one or two Death Caps could kill an adult cow or horse. The toxic mechanism for amatoxins is the blocking of RNA polymerase, an enzyme necessary for producing messenger RNA, ultimately required for protein synthesis. Liver and kidney cells have a high metabolic rate and are particularly vulnerable to this toxin, which leads to necrosis in
these organs. Liver necrosis was noted on both calves that fell victim to the poisonous mushroom
ingestion, which is a typical finding also in blue-green algae poisoning, cocklebur ingestion, or
copper toxicosis.
What should you do if you suspect poisonous mushroom growing in your fields?
There are field guides that can help identify mushrooms, but this is not a trivial endeavor. Many mushrooms look very similar to each other so making an identification based on an online photo is difficult. Local mycologists or mushroom hunters may be able to help. Another idea is to use a phone app called iNaturalist where users upload pictures of organisms and other users, many of whom are scientists, help identify them. The app is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society where all users may help contribute to the identification of uploaded plants, animals, or fungi. There is no guarantee that the app will provide an accurate identification, but it will allow the user access to many enthusiasts and professional botanists and zoologists and certainly presents an improvement over using a picture guide. Finally, there is a test kit available that identifies amatoxins in small amounts of mushroom tissue or urine of an animal that is suspected of having consumed the poisonous mushrooms. The test is less sensitive than lab testing at CAHFS, so negative results have a chance to be false. The kit was developed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service and costs $45 for 3 tests or $205 for 15 tests. Unfortunately, due to high demand, the kits are sold out at the moment, but should be available again in early 2022 from this site: https://amatoxtest.com/. If the mushrooms you found are identified as poisonous, it is best to pull them out and discard them. To avoid any contact with the mushrooms, wear gloves and wash your hands after
handling them.
What should you do if you suspect mushroom poisoning in cattle?
As always when encountering sudden death in livestock, contact your veterinarian to discuss the case and get help with identifying the cause. There are many causes of sudden death in cattle and a good history combined with a field necropsy is the best strategy to get to the bottom of it. If no obvious cause can be found and you have observed mushrooms where the animal was grazing, collect some of them and submit together with the carcass or tissues to the diagnostic lab. Taking a close-up focused picture of the mushrooms may also be helpful in making a diagnosis. Toxicological tests are necessary to confirm a diagnosis and the best tissues to submit are rumen content, liver, kidney, and urine. However, to be able to rule out other causes, additional tissues or the entire carcass should be submitted.
Unfortunately, there are no specific treatments or antidotes for these types of poisonings.
Supportive care to help an animal clear the toxin from its system is all that can be done for
surviving animals with suspected mushroom poisoning.
The chances of mushroom poisonings in cattle are certainly slim, but they should be on your
radar if nothing else seems to make sense, especially when conditions are right for mushrooms to grow.
Amanita phalloides (Death Cap)
Credit: Archenzo, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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