bred 7 year old cow dies

Cow was 3 weeks from giving me an ET calf by broker
She was in good health plenty of hay and mineral.
Looks like she just come to barn laid down and that was it!
Anyone ever had that happen?

Usually an artery bursts, bet you found her pretty much without distress and probably like she just laid down.

Ya thats what I'm thinking 2
Looked just like u said
Crazy!

A few years ago, one of my donors was found dead at the ET center where I do my flushing. It appeared like she had been walking on a trail to the water fountain and simply dropped over dead. When a post mortem was performed, they found that a small abscess on her rumen had broke . This abscess was probably due to an old hardware injury. The vet said that animal's body oftentimes is able to isolate the infection from these kinds of injuries and they oftentimes can live for many years and appear to be perfectly healthy. That certainly was the case with my cow as I had seen her a couple weeks prior to her death and she looked as healthy as she possibly could. The vet said that when the abscess had broke, she would have probably died within a few seconds of the infection entering her blood system. He said that this happens more often than many realize. Oftentimes a person will find a cow dead that appeared to be in very healthy condition a few hours before, and this is oftentimes a possible cause of their death. Over the years, I have had this happen a few times. A cow or bull who appeared perfectly normal is found dead a short while later... and it just appears that they toppled over.

Did she have a magnet in her?  The cost of a magnet to prevent hardware is a small price compared to losing an animal (or 2 in your case)...

HavinABlast said:

Did she have a magnet in her?  The cost of a magnet to prevent hardware is a small price compared to losing an animal (or 2 in your case)...

Click to expand...

Yes my cow that died did have a magnet in her. I have put magnets in all my cows ever since I was involved in a study while at University. The University had a dairy and we split their first calf heifers into two groups at random. Magnets were put into 1 group and not in the other group. We also had milk records for each group before the magnets were put into the one group. After several weeks, we found that the group with the magnets had shown a 6% increase in milk production. I remember thinking that this probably would be similar in beef cows. I had a friend who had access to used magnets from a packing plant and one day I received a package with several hundred magnets in it. From then on, I put magnets in all my bred heifers and have done this for over 30 years now.
My cow that died did have a magnet but I suspect that whatever poked through her rumen wall was probably lined up against the magnet but it still could have caused an injury. The vet who did the post mortem did not look for the magnet but I wished I had told him about it.

justintime I had not read that about the milk.  Good to know.

We put magnets in all of our replacements when we do pelvic measurements.  We learned our lesson the hard way of course. 

Magnets are great and I use them on all of my females.  However, they do not work with non-ferrous metals such as aluminum.  I lost a calf this year due to aluminum wire.