Hardware Disease Research Paper

Hardware Disease Bovine traumatic reticuloperitonitis or also known as hardware disease, is a disease seen mostly in dairy cattle and occasionally seen in beef cattle. It is often noted that farmers will be recommended by veterinarians to give their cattle big magnets to collect the metal if any inside the reticulum of the animal and hopefully the magnet will stay in the animal’s stomach until it dies or goes to market.
Hardware disease is a disease where the bovine ingests some sort of metal object and that metal objects gets stuck in the reticulum (the second part of the stomach) and perforates or pokes through the stomach wall and punctures another vital organ to the animal’s body. Some vital organs that the metal can harm is the
This is because with radiology we can take a picture of the animal in a lateral position of both the thoracic and abdominal cavities to see the metal objects if any inside the animal’s reticulum. Metal on x-rays or radiographs shows up bright white. It can be hard to miss and therefore makes it easy to diagnose in most patients; however, hardware disease can only be diagnosed by a Veterinarian (Moseley, B. L. (2015).
Clinical signs of a bovine that has hardware disease is the fact that they will maybe bloated, have a loss of appetite, be reluctant to move, and they can even look depressed (Moseley, B. L. (2015). If the animal is just being used for market then being sent to slaughter and having the reticulum closely examined can be beneficial in confirming the diagnosis of hardware disease (Moseley, B. L. (2015). If the animal is expensive and used to showing or breeding then a rumenotomy may be recommended by a veterinarian (Lambert, B. (2005, August).
A rumenotomy is a surgical incision made into the reticulum to remove the perforating metal object and also the help stich up any affected areas inside the body to help the healing process speed up (Moseley, B. L.
This is a sad route, but unfortunately it is the reality of hardware disease. Treatment although may not be successful can help the animal survive even just for a couple more years (Constable, P. D., BVSc. (2015, May).
The likely outcome of the treatment again depends on how much infection is inside the body, when the infection started, when the clinical signs started, and when the clinical signs were noticed. As a general rule, 60 to 75 percent of affected animals can be returned to useful function if the disease is detected and treated early in its course (Moseley, B. L. (2015). Early detection is key with hardware disease, it can be between life and death for the animal.
Some facts about hardware disease is that this disease is mostly seen in dairy cattle and occasionally seen in beef cattle. The reason for this is because dairy cattle are put on mostly a silage diet. This means that man made this diet for them to produce the most amount of good milk. This also means that machinery helped and machinery breaks all the time. Metal objects can fall into the silage and the cattle eat it or metal can be in the grass and grains and the farmers not notice it until it’s inside the animal and you have hardware disease (Raap, J. A. (11,December