Steer Planet - Show Steers and Club Calves Forum

I tried searching for this topic but it brought back over 50 pages with those words so I thought I would just post instead.

Heres the scenario. My Dad had a Charolais heifer try to calve during night, missed seeing her. Next morning, calf was out to hips and dead, got him out fine but she is down. That was a week ago.
She is in the middle of a pasture, he hauls her feed and water. She will drink but will not eat hardly anything. Same feed she was always getting. She keeps getting herself on her side and cannot get her feet back under her but she hasn't bloated up yet but we can't keep her sitting up long. Yesterday she tried to get up for my Dad and got on her back legs but was too wobbly to get on all 4s. He said she would have with another hand there. Today, she has stayed sitting up for several hours (which is a record), but Dad said she had a a bloddy/gunky discharge (never before) and maybe a dropped ear. So he gave penicillin.

Any suggestions on injections to boost strenght? He feels if she can just get to standing she will make huge progress, but the concern is the not eating and the new discharge. He is pretty old-school so I am posting this as I know he will not take any further action unless I see to it myself.

Sorry to hear about your heifer.

We had a similar situation.   We have a hip lift and use that with a loader tractor to get the cow up.   I'm no vet but we were told to give a shot of Dexamethasone or another anti-inflammitory drug.  Our cow was then able to get up & down by herself, although was wobbley.  

I had one walk after being down 26 days. We picked her up with a boom lift everyday to get blood flowing to her legs. Her back legs were the pro lem-she could move her front ones fromn the start.

Thanks for the responses. I was thinking of giving dex and banamine but wanted to see if that was the right thing. We don't have a hip lifter but are checking with our vet, he has one he loans out.

As usuall, I was typing my normally long response only to see several good replies as I hit the post button. All good advise, was saying mostly the same things as far as the hip lifters and getting her up goes, as well as pain killers.

Try getting her on a pretty good dose of Vitamin B Complex soon as you can, this helps with red blood cell regeneration, and will make a big difference in recovery time for the whole animal.

Main thing here is to not let her lose the will to live. Keep her trying to get up and keep her spirits high, once they give up -- it is all but over for them.

She needs to eat, whether it be normal intake or forced  via tubed energy. Dehydration and lack of calories will only make her slower!

Best of luck -- give me a call if you just need to talk abouth er-- I tend to be windy as most know!!! hehehe

Take care and good luck !

Terry

If you can access some old conveyor belting  cut to a usable length and
bolt together with loops to slide a piece of pipe through wrap a chain
 and get her up and to the barn where you can use a chain hoist or come-long.

If she won't eat, try giving her calf starter, stay on her with pen to thwart any secondary infections. If she likes the creep feed move it away a little farther from her, make her go to it. Grandpa told me he put his Hereford saddle on one and used that for his sling!{my saddle is not going on a cow} Good luck!!

I think everyone has given you good advice so far.

I have been in this exact same situation before a few different times and I would agree that it is key to get her up as soon as possible.

Your hip lift should work well but what I have done in the past is made a sling out of used belting by bolting two pieces of flat iron to it on each end, cutting a hole just under the flat iron so a rope can go through it.

I also took a piece of 2x2" sqaure tube about 32" long (or thereabouts) and cut three holes though it with the torch and welded som 1" pipe sections in the holes like "bushings" to pass ropes through.

I then attached my two slings to the square tube at either end so that the tube held them apart and kept them from slipping around on the cow and lifted the cow from the centre portion with a front end loader and transported her o a barn where I continued to lift her for a few days with a come along in a gateway. Worked quite well and they all reccovered.