The newborn calf has many challenges to face as it begins live
on its own. The first of these challenges is a change in
environment. If a calf can get beyond the challenge of finding
its feet and finding mom's teat, there is a good chance it will
be able to handle life. However, some challenges won't manifest
themselves until later in the calf's life. The first of these is
enteric disease (scours). The cause of calf scours is usually
fairly easy to diagnose. Most of it is based on calf age at
onset, because a calf is exposed the day it is born, and
different bugs have different incubation, or prepatent, periods.
For instance, the incubation period for coccidia (protozoal
parasite) is about 3 weeks, therefore, it is unlikely that a 1
week old calf will have scours due to coccidia infection.
Therefore, how you treat scours should be based on calf age and
the likelihood of the pathogen causing the disease. Oral
antibiotics will only work with reasonable efficacy in cases of
bacterial scours, usually caused by E.