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Hardware disease is not really a disease but a condition caused by the cow or calf eating hay or grain that has been contaminated with foreign metal fragments or objects. Sometimes feed or hay can accidentally get small pieces of metal, wire, screws, or nails. This is not common in commercially prepared feeds as they use powerful magnets to screen out these items. Hay can obtain these objects and the cattle can accidentally eat them. After the point of ingestion, it can pass through the animal or it can become lodged in the digestive tract.

Once the foregn object is lodged in the digestive tract it can cause a wide variety of symptoms or perhaps even no symptoms at all for quite some time. Sometimes a sharp object can lodge in the mouth where it may cause immediate discomfort and the owner can remove it easily. Other times the object can lodge in the digestive tract, stomach and cause many problems.

The first sign of hardware disease would be the lack of appetite. Cattle don't typically show signs of distress in the digestive tract the way horses do, they just simply go off feed. They may be antisocial, hanging off to themselves. Any cow or calf that suddenly stops eating but does not have discharge from their nose or a fever should be evaluated for hardware disease. Unfortunately, there is not a lot that can be done except for putting some large bolus shaped magnets into their gut to attract and hold the metal so that it will not do further damage. This is the only treatment. Some cattle will get better if the metal was imbedded in their stomach wall, and antibiotics may clear up any secondary infection.

If there are signs of bloody stool, then the disease has progressed too far and there is too much damage done, unfortunately. This is why most farmers and ranchers are very particular about keeping their pastures and land clean and free of clutter and scrap metal or wire. Wire is the most common culprit, and often older farms have wire and debris from earlier times that get churned up in the soil. Keeping all debris cleaned up and disposed of properly will go far toward preventing this unfortunate problem.

In my years on a ranch, I only saw three cases of hardware disease. The tricky part of it is, the diagnosis comes only from what you observe and cattle are not good candidates for abdominal surgery to get the hardware out. I had a heifer one time that apparently ingested some metal object as she began having black tarry stools. The vet said hardware disease is the only likely cause since she did not have fever or any other symptom. She had to be marketed for the butcher market since she had no fever. Fever would have indicated some other disease.

Learn more about this author, Brenda G. Koscelny.
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