Milk fever (hypocalcaemia) at calving is a preventable metabolic disease that causes severe weakness, recumbency and death in dairy cows, with prepartum management being the key to prevention.
Milk fever causes a cow to collapse unable to rise, suffering from muscle weakness, hypothermia and inability to access food and water. Without prompt treatment, recumbency causes compressive muscle injury within hours. Prevention through prepartum dietary management - negative DCAD diets, vitamin D supplementation and pre-calving calcium drenches - is highly effective and protects individual cows from this entirely preventable collapse.