Retained Placenta and Uterine Infection — What to Do and What Not to Do
By Vikas Industrial Corporation, Khanna, Punjab
Pulling a retained placenta can do harm. The 24-hour rule, how to recognise metritis, why brucellosis makes handling afterbirth a human-health issue, and why selenium advice in Punjab depends on where your village is.
What counts as a retained placenta
A cow normally passes the afterbirth within 3 to 8 hours of delivering the calf. If it is still hanging or inside after 24 hours it is called retained fetal membranes, or retained placenta (MSD Veterinary Manual). It has no single cause. Risk factors include abortion, especially from brucellosis, difficult calving, twins, stillbirth, low blood calcium, high environmental temperature, older age, early or induced calving, infection of the placenta, and nutritional problems. Part of the cause is a weak immune response at the placenta (MSD Veterinary Manual; Beagley et al., 2010).
Why it matters
An uncomplicated retained placenta is mostly unpleasant for the handlers and not directly harmful. But cows with retained membranes are at greater risk of metritis, displaced abomasum, mastitis, ketosis and early culling, and may be less fertile in the next lactation (MSD Veterinary Manual). Low blood calcium contributes to retained placenta and metritis too, which is why the calcium plan around calving is part of uterine health.
Do not pull it
Manual removal of retained membranes is not recommended and is potentially harmful. Trimming off hanging tissue that bothers the handler is acceptable. Untreated cows usually pass the membranes within 2 to 11 days. Routine antibiotics placed in the womb have not been found helpful and may do harm, and oxytocin, oestrogen, prostaglandin and oral calcium have not been shown to hasten expulsion (MSD Veterinary Manual). A review of the evidence reached the same view about many commonly practised treatments, and found that injected antibiotics can help when metritis follows but have not been shown to improve later fertility (Beagley et al., 2010). Call your vet if the cow is unwell; do not pull.
Protect yourself: brucellosis
Brucella abortus causes abortion, stillbirth, weak calves and retained placenta in cattle. Infected cows shed the bacteria in the afterbirth, birth fluids and milk, and the disease is highly infectious to people, who can be infected through the eyes, mouth, cuts and even unbroken skin. There is no practical treatment for infected cattle, so prevention and detection matter (MSD Veterinary Manual). Treat every retained placenta and every abortion as possibly infectious. Wear gloves, cover cuts, never handle the afterbirth with bare hands, wash well afterwards, and ask your vet to test cows that abort. Dispose of the afterbirth by deep burial away from water and animals: sunlight kills the bacteria within hours, but in a cool place they have survived for more than 2 months.
Signs of metritis in the first 3 weeks
Uterine infection is common. Sheldon and colleagues report that it affects about half of dairy cattle after calving and lowers fertility (Sheldon et al., 2009). Veterinarians define puerperal metritis, within 21 days of calving, as an abnormally large womb with a foul, watery, red-brown discharge, together with signs of illness such as a fall in milk or dullness and a fever above 39.5°C (Sheldon et al., 2006). A cow with a large womb and pus-like discharge but no fever or dullness has clinical metritis, and from 21 days after calving a discharge that is more than half pus is called clinical endometritis. Take the temperature every day for the first 2 weeks. A fever above 39.5°C with discharge or dullness needs a vet that day, because injected antibiotics are indicated when the animal is systemically ill (MSD Veterinary Manual).
Prevention: what the evidence supports
A sound calcium plan helps, and so does cooling in summer, because heat is a listed risk factor (MSD Veterinary Manual). Vitamin E and selenium help only where the diet is short of them: the MSD manual says supplementation is beneficial in herds that are deficient. A pooled analysis of 44 studies of vitamin E in the dry period found a benefit in 20, no benefit in 21 and more retained placenta in 3, with an overall reduction and better results from the synthetic form (Bourne et al., 2007). In a small Gujarat trial of buffaloes, retained placenta occurred in 5.0 percent of animals given extra concentrate and minerals against 13.3 percent of controls, a difference that was not statistically significant, while injected micro-minerals significantly shortened the time to expulsion (Kalasariya et al., 2017). Keep the calving area clean and dry, and wash hands and instruments before helping with a calving.
The selenium question in Punjab: test before you add
Selenium is where Punjab differs from most advice written elsewhere. The agricultural area bordering Nawanshahr and Hoshiarpur districts is popularly known as the seleniferous belt of India, and wheat and paddy straw from it contain significantly high selenium (Solovyev et al., 2018). In greenhouse tests on naturally selenium-rich soil from this region, crops carried 2 to 29 mg of selenium per kg (Dhillon and Dhillon, 2009), and scientists at the PAU Krishi Vigyan Kendra warn that fodder grown on such soils can prove fatal to domestic animals (Jaidka et al., 2017). In a study of 680 adults in seven villages of the area, higher selenium levels were linked with more hair and nail abnormalities and other signs of selenium excess (Chawla et al., 2020). So in or near this belt, do not add selenium injections or premixes unless your vet has confirmed a deficiency by testing, and do not assume a retained placenta there is a selenium shortage. We found no district-wise selenium map for the rest of Punjab, so the safe approach is the same everywhere: test first, supplement second, and never copy a neighbour's mineral programme.
When to call the vet
Call the same day if the placenta is still hanging after 24 hours and the cow is dull, off feed or feverish; if there is a foul, watery, red-brown discharge; if her temperature is above 39.5°C; if she is down or cannot rise; or if she has aborted, which also calls for brucellosis testing. A retained placenta in an otherwise bright, eating cow is watched for a few days with daily temperature checks, not pulled.
Do not pull a retained placenta. Check the temperature daily for 2 weeks, treat every afterbirth and abortion as a human-health risk, fix calcium and cooling, and test before adding selenium, especially near the Nawanshahr–Hoshiarpur belt.
Sources
Figures in this article come from the published sources below. Each link opens the original paper or reference page.
- MSD Veterinary Manual. Retained fetal membranes in cows.
- Beagley JC, Whitman KJ, Baptiste KE, Scherzer J (2010). Physiology and treatment of retained fetal membranes in cattle. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 24:261–268.
- MSD Veterinary Manual. Brucellosis in cattle.
- Sheldon IM, Lewis GS, LeBlanc S, Gilbert RO (2006). Defining postpartum uterine disease in cattle. Theriogenology 65:1516–1530.
- Sheldon IM, et al. (2009). Defining postpartum uterine disease and the mechanisms of infection and immunity in the female reproductive tract in cattle. Biology of Reproduction 81:1025–1032.
- Bourne N, Laven R, Wathes DC, Martinez T, McGowan M (2007). A meta-analysis of the effects of vitamin E supplementation on the incidence of retained foetal membranes in dairy cows. Theriogenology 67:494–501.
- Kalasariya RM, et al. (2017). Effect of peripartum nutritional management on plasma profile of steroid hormones, metabolites, and postpartum fertility in buffaloes. Veterinary World 10:302–310.
- Solovyev N, et al. (2018). Selenium-rich mushrooms cultivation on a wheat straw substrate from seleniferous area in Punjab, India. Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology 50:362–366.
- Dhillon KS, Dhillon SK (2009). Selenium concentrations of common weeds and agricultural crops grown in the seleniferous soils of northwestern India. Science of the Total Environment 407:6150–6156.
- Jaidka M, Singh J, Kaur R, Dass A (2017). Seleniferous soils: spatial distribution, impact on plant, human and animal health, and its management. Indian Farming 67(11).
- Chawla R, et al. (2020). Exposure to a high selenium environment in Punjab, India: biomarkers and health conditions. Science of the Total Environment 719:134541.