Intas Polivet (2010) Vol. 11 (II): 233-235 Clinical Article A Clinical Study on Neonatal Calf Diarrhoea Bipin Kumar, Pallav Shekhar and Nirbhay Kumar 1 Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, Ethics and Jurisprudence Bihar Veterinary College Patna – 800 014 (Bihar) Introduction Diarrhoea in calves is a major cause of economic loss to the cattle industries (Radostits et al., 2000). It is the leading cause of death worldwide in dairy and beef calves aged less than four month. Financial losses occur not only from calf mortality but also from the cost of medication and labor needed to treat sick calves. Calf diarrhea has variety of infective as well as non infective causes resulting in progressive dehydration, electrolyte losses, generalized weakness and metabolic acidosis which are potentially fatal. However, the most common cause is pathogenic enteric microorganism which interacts with immunity, nutrition and environment of calves, precipitating varied degree of diarrhea (Webster, 1982). Micro organism like E. coli often attributed to calf scours is clinically complicated by microbes like Proteus and Pseudomonas (West, 1977). Salmonella also affects calves especially kept under intensive system of husbandry (Peel et al., 1990). Rotavirus, Corona virus and cryptosporidium spp. are capable of causing diarrhea in young calves (Snod-Grass et al., 1986). Material and Methods The present study was carried out in calves showing the signs of diarrhea. All such calves brought to Veterinary Clinics and some local khatals, were included in the study. 56 calves below one month of age having diarrhoea were examined and only 30 calves having bacterial origin diarrhea were identified and taken for study on clinical symptoms, haematobiochemical changes and therapeutic study on the basis of culture and sensitivity of faeces. The hematological changes like PCV were determined with wintrobes haemotocrit tube method (Schalm et al., 1967). Hemoglobin were determined by Sahli’ s hemoglobino meter method, total erythrocyte count (TEC) and total leukocyte count (TLC) were determined as per method describe by Schalm et al. (1967). The biochemical parameters like sodium and potassium were estimated by flame photometer as per method described by Oser (1979). Total serum protein (TSP) was analyzed by Biurette method as described by Oser (1979). All the clinically affected calves which were found to be positive for E. coli , proteus sp. Klebsiella sp. were randomly divided in three treatment groups. Each group consisting of 10 calves. Six apparently healthy and clinically normal calves of either sex less than 30 days of age were kept as healthy control for the study of different parameters. Result and Discussion The organism isolated from rectal swab of diarrhoeic calves were E. coli 22 (72.22%), proteus 5 (16.66%), Klebsiella sp. 2 (8.33%). and unidentified organism 1 (2.77%). The incidence of diarrhea was observed higher in colostrums deprived calves, which might be due to agammaglobinemia which make them susceptible to neonatal diarrhoea (Dubey and Rao,1977) also observed the high incidence of diarrhea in colostrums deprived calves. The most important clinical manifestation in calves during present study were dullness, depression with lethargy and anorexia. The faeces was semisolid to watery with offensive odor, yellowish white in colour and sometimes blood stained. These observations were similar to the earlier reports (Bellamy and Acres, 1979 and Blood et al., 1994). Yellowish white diarrhoeic faeces might be due to high content of salt particularly 1. Department of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology 233