Cows

Did you know that cockleburs (Xanthium genus), those annoying burs that stick to your clothes and scratch your skin, are toxic if consumed?  Most people are not in the habit of consuming the prickly, spiny seed pods, but they can be incorporated into animal feeds and hay.  Horses, pigs, and cattle can all become poisoned.  Pigs are the species most commonly poisoned from these seedlings.  
  

The weather is so beautiful that you decide to take a hike along a stream or small river and you come across a deceased white-tailed deer in or around the water.  Unfortunately, it is not an uncommon scenario.  Epizootic hemorrhagic disease or EHD is a viral disease of white-tailed and mule deer that is spread by biting gnats.  Domestic ruminants such as cattle and sheep are typically asymptomatic carriers of the virus but occasionally cattle will exhibit clinical disease.  
 

Are you a member of the meat-eating public? Then you might want to familiarize yourself with “Mad Cow Disease,” or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). First described in 1986 in Great Britain, this disease is a fatal, slow-onset encephalopathy, or disease of the brain, in cattle. “Why should I be concerned?” you might ask. Mad cow disease is the only known form of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy to be transmitted from animals to humans, which makes it a lethal zoonotic disease.

Malignant Catarrhal Fever (MCF) or Bovine Malignant Catarrh are actually two diseases caused by separate herpes viruses that are almost always fatal to cattle, deer, bison, occasionally pigs, rabbits, and certain exotic ruminants. Neither virus causes disease in their principal hosts, either the wildebeest or the sheep.

The beautiful flowering shrub adjacent to your porch may have a sinister side to it. Don’t let those colorful blooms fool you. Cuttings from these bushes may be toxic to your pets and livestock.

In the United States, Lyme Borreliosis is the most commonly-reported tick-transmitted disease in humans. Lyme disease is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi which is a spirochete (corkscrew-shaped bacteria) that is transmitted by various Ixodes ticks. Lyme disease is also seen in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia.

Endemic to Madagascar, eastern, and southern Africa is an RNA disease causing virus named for the area in which it was first reported in 1930 called Rift Valley Fever (RVF). The virus has since been detected as far north as Egypt and over to the Arabian Peninsula countries of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Although an important pathogen in its native area affecting domestic ruminants and people, RVF is feared as a potential biological weapon capable of spreading the globe by the movement of infected people, animals, and insects.

Vesicular stomatitis (VS) is a viral disease of horses, cattle and swine that produces characteristic lesions known as vesicles and erosions. After a short incubation period of anywhere from 3 to 15 days, affected animals will have an elevated temperature, appear lethargic (depressed) and anorexic, and often exhibit drooling of saliva (ptyalism) and lameness.

Heartwater or Cowdriosis is a disease of cattle, sheep, goats and wild ruminants endemic to Sub-Sahara Africa, Madagascar, and portions of the Caribbean such as Antigua and Guadeloupe. Heartwater is caused by obligate intracellular rickettsial organisms that parasitize macrophages (a type of white blood cell). After initially replicating in macrophages, the organism will move to the vascular endothelium where it undergoes additional replication.

Tall fescue (Festuca elatior or F. arundinace) is among the most common cool season pasture grasses grown in North America and in other countries having a temperate climate. Almost all of the pasture planted before 1980 is infected with Neotyphodium coenophialum, a microscopic fungus or endophyte. "Endophyte" describes the location of the fungal growth within the grass as endo=within and phyte=plant.