NADIS disease bulletins are written specifically for farmers, to increase awareness of prevalent conditions and promote disease prevention and control, in order to benefit animal health and welfare.

Farmers are advised to discuss their individual farm circumstances with their veterinary surgeon

Diagnosing Copper Deficiency

Copper deficiency is one of the most commonly recorded mineral deficiencies. Because copper is involved in a wide range of systems within the body, copper deficiency produces a wide range of problems from non-specific conditions such as reduced fertility and impaired production to specific syndromes such as post-parturient haemoglobinuria. Because it’s common a wide range of copper products are available to treat or prevent copper deficiency.

However, copper supplementation costs money, so it’s important to ensure that you do need copper before you supplement it and that when you supplement it that the supplement does its job.

Tests available:

A large number of tests are available for identifying the copper status of farm animals. None are foolproof and all need careful interpretation based on individual farm history and requirements.

a) Copper in the feed

Before supplementing copper it is a good idea to get an estimate of how much copper your animals are getting in their feed. However measuring copper alone is not enough, you also need to measure iron, sulphur and molybdenum intake too. It is also important to measure sulphur and iron in the drinking water too, particularly if you have iron pipes or are using borehole water. These results will only give you a guide; you need to test the animals too

b) Blood tests:

Blood test for copper are widely used, however they suffer from the problem that blood copper levels fall at the end of the process as they are kept high by release of copper from the liver. Thus animals with apparently normal blood copper can be deficient. Blood coppers can be useful for monitoring, particularly if you had low blood results before testing.

c) Liver biopsy

Copper is stored in the liver. Animals on copper-deficient diets lose copper gradually from their liver. Thus liver copper gives a good guide to copper status. It is not foolproof though; liver copper can be significantly reduced by high iron intakes without the animals showing signs of copper deficiency. This is where interpretation comes in. If you have low liver copper, no signs and high iron intakes, supplementing copper may be an expensive luxury.

Liver biopsy is the best method of collecting liver samples for copper measurement, as the liver copper of the affected group can be directly measured, rather than relying on measurements in culled cows or other casualty animals. Liver biopsy is a safe and well tolerated procedure

d) Testing the response to supplementation

All of the above test will give you a guide as to whether you need copper supplementation. Nevertheless, in many cases the only conclusive test is to give the animals copper and measure the response. The best way to do this is to identify a likely need for copper by testing and then to supplement a portion of your animals, leaving some untreated and compare the two groups. This will not only show you whether you needed copper but whether treatment was economic.

Richard Laven PhD BVetMed MRCVS