Tiny calf

I had 2 calves born in the last 2 days weighing 35-40 pounds. I mean they look like puppies. Totally different pedigrees. All my other calves are normal. Do they grow to be normal?? All have had good hay and mineral all winter...

my best yr heifer this year was 37 at birth..

think of it this way: they can only get bigger-- and they can only get better... from here on out.

was your 37 lber ra x shorthorn

One of mine is a walks alone and the other is a copper penny

better small and alive than big and dead, I have found the small one get going faster.

From what you guy say it sounds positive. However, these babie are less than half the size of the others. Is this genetic? Will they ever catch up to the others or will they be dwarves their whole lives? Thanks!

kamerkat said:

was your 37 lber ra x shorthorn

Click to expand...

no pb angus sired by Northern Improvement from commercial heifer.

I had this problem this year too! I have never seen this. I looks normal just a really tiny calf. I hope it turns out good. Ours is out of our Whiskey 7 X Meyer Cleanup bull and a Angus/Char cow.

We had a pb charolais heifer calf last fall that was early and only weighted 35 lbs.  We used a sheep esophagal feeder to tube her.  She is still small for her age but looks absolutely normal otherwise.  I was thinking about going for a mini ;D

I thought at the time that it was environmental due to the drought and heat last summer maybe.

we had one born at like 28 lbs last year. he never did grow right. he is still tiny!

We have had the largest difference between BW this year that I have ever seen, my smallest calf was 45# and the largest 132#, not out of the same bull but the dams side is the same. But in general even the calves with the same sire have had a big fluctuation, one sires low was 72 and high 132 and one other sires low was 45 with a high of 87. I am not sure that I have ever had a 45# full term calf before and it is up and doing great.

My grandpa had a 14-Pound calf.  I dont know the full story because it was before i was born, it set the world record, but he didnt realize until it was about a week old and by then he had grown, and so they were never able to register it as the record setting calf. 
Right now, we have a calf thats only about 50 lbs, and he is out of a monster cow, so i think as long as she has good milk, the calf should grow, he might be one of the smaller ones in the fall, but wont nevcesarily be dwarfed.

Of course the ideal is a small calf that grows fast and gets heavy...the challenge with that is that bw and ww are negatively correlated, so a lot of calves that come very small DON'T grow like calves with more moderate birth weights. There are out liers, though. I'm not talking about "dwarf" cattle...Dwarfism is an actual genetic condition that should be viewed as something totally different. We're just talking about cattle that may lack the performance of some of their contemporaries.

I've also seen some small birth weights this year. This IS partly genetic and partly environmental. Heat and drought will cause calves to come earlier and smaller than average. My smallest calf last fall was born 3 weeks early and weighed about 60 pounds, and he's actually grown as well as any bull calf in the pasture, so it's possible for a real small one to do very well if the genetics are there and he has a good mama. My smallest this spring was less than 50 pounds, and I'm not as optimistic about her... Light birth weight, calving ease sire and a 2-year-old mama that isn't impressing me so far.

go lowline....

One of our steer calves last year weighed only 60 pounds at birth. He weaned at 675.