Foreign bodies in the digestive system in the diarrheic Hanwoo calves: A retrospective study

Abstract

Despite the livestock industry has made great improvements in feeding, breeding, and herd management, proper prevention and treatment of calf diseases are still remained as a challenge (Kim et al, 2021). Globally, calves' morbidity and mortality rates due to several diseases have been reported to be about 35% and 7%, respectively (Mee, 2013;Windeyer et al, 2014;Abuelo et al, 2019). Among several diseases of calves, calf diarrhea is a disease of the digestive system with watery feces and more frequent intestine movements, and has been a major cause of economic loss to the cattle farms due to cost of treatment, retarded growth, and death of calves (Lee et al, 2020). Of note, it has been reported that diarrhea is the main disease with the highest morbidity from newborns less than 1 month old to the preweaned calves; in accordance with published articles in Korea, 97.6% of calves had diarrhea during the suckling period and diarrhea was the cause of death in 53.4% of dairy calf deaths (Kim et al, 1990;Hur et al, 2013;Choe et al, 2017;Kim et al, 2021). The diarrheic calf presents several symptoms including dehydration by the loss of water, acidosis owing to electrolyte loss and imbalance, depression, lethargy, decrease of the suck reflex, and more severity such as recumbence, coma, and death