calving season stories

  Now we're getting some interesting situations. I thought that I may have seen about every kind of situation, but I haven't seen it all yet. Brent

The dairy I work at had a very interesting calf in November. The calf was born with no upper palate, nose was split in half and each half sat beside the lower jaw. It was a heifer too.

  Well true to form, we've officially started calving, 19 days early set of heifer twin calves born dead, Dawson's Cherokee 166 X Money Shot. I'm sure that the one sis got her navel cord broke & that was a deal breaker for Momma. There was a reason the heifer looked like a tank. Lucky she had em I guess. Reload. Good Luck everyone.

11 out of twelve calves coming backwards? Man oh man.

We always run into upsidedown calves have had as many as 6 out of 80 upsidedown, last year we had 2 out of 100. Some big, some small, seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. DH has gotten really good at turning them over. Always have a couple backwards, and last year the 2 backwards were out of an 9 year old cow and her 4 year old daughter. Neither had had a backwards before that. Size can have something to do with malpresentations, but mostly I think size of the calf causes head back and possibly leg back situations. As far as backwards or upside down, I don't really think it plays a big role.

I agree randiliana. I have had vets tell me big calves often have a front leg back. Then you have to go in,push calf in cup hoof(as not to tear uterus) then realign. Plain backward calves are a easy pull unless upside done. I think jit has the best story so far. 11 out of twelve distocias is unholy let alone all 11 being backwards. That is a mystical,epical,magical , pretty much biblical number. Then to have a hired man quit on top of that. I know I had one calf with leg back this year. Ended up loosing calf.

I wonder what the odds of having 12 calves and 11 backwards is? If you figured even a 2 % backward calf as a normal occurence.....how would you figure odds on this on 12 head or 300 head? On 12 head it would be equivilent to winning a big lottery I would guess. Statisically if you figured 300 cows at a 2% figure that would be 6 backward calves. I wonder if say MARC or someone had data on % on dystocia and %on backward calves and etc.

AJ, Here is more data for your backwards calf project.  I have a theory that it runs in families.  We bought a simmental heifer years ago and her first calf was a big backwards heifer which we kept.  Cow's next calf was backwards - sold her.  The next year, the daughter had a backwards calf - a heifer which we kept.  And the cycle continued, some times one of this family would have a normal presentation and other times not.  We have culled this family down to one last cow and this year she had a backwards calf - she will go to the sale barn.  We've had a few other random backwards calves over the years.    You may ask why we kept heifers back from this line..  well to be honest they were some of the best heifer calves we raised each year.  We kept hoping that this would be the one that wouldn't do the backwards thing but they did. 

About 15 years ago we had a calf born with a 5th leg coming out of its rear quarter. It was located just below the pin bones on the right side of the calf.  It just flopped there and did not seem to adjoined to anything. It was quite normal except for that and we fed it out and it ended up in the freezer. It really looked funny with that leg flopping when it ran. This calf was intensely inbred, being full Irish and the sire and dam being very closely related for many generations. I have always wondered if this was probably why this happened.
I can remember my dad having a calf with two noses and mouths on one head when I was a kid. It was dead at birth. Not long ago, I asked him what ever became of that calf, and he said he had taken it to show the local vet, and he had sent it away to a Vet college. He did not know if they kept it or not.

Cool. I know most years seemed like the first calf of the season was born dead. I assumed some kind of a pregancy problem. I think twining is genetic for sure. Seemed like the old yellow Simmental were always twinning. Could be a backward connection also. Come to think about it seems like the last backwards we had was a yellow Simmental cow of dads.

weve had two calves so far we had a mommas boy heifer out of our my turn heifer, had to pull her one leg was in front of the other, hell of a calf but not sure about the calving ease of mommas boy, second calf was out of our hannibal cow 4 year old bred to monopoly the calf was backwards with one foot sticking out with bag broke little heifer calf died next day really hurts the pocket book this is our second set of calves and when you only have a few cows you really feel the hurt.

Days like today make me almost HATE (yes... hate) calving season...
Start off the morning by feeding the 3 show heifers. While down there (mind you this is 7am) I see a 1st calf heifer doin' the 'kick/twitch/up,down' motions. Feed the girls, come back in and tell mom '835 must be starting, can you keep an eye on her while I'm west (helping gentleman get bulls ready for his sale)?' She says yeah, sure. Turns heifers out after I leave, said not one thing was going on. Checks at 3 and again nothings going on. I get a call @ 5:30 that says 'Get hom ASAP please, may need your help.' Soooo on my way home I go.  Get home, heifer acts like she's really gettin to it. Laying down, pushing, the normal. Get the show heifers in again, feed them, watch 835 for a bit longer, come inside to let the other heifers finish eating. Mom says 'Suppers ready.' I said no, I'm gonna go check that heifer, I've got a sneakin suspicion calf isnt presented right (just a gut feeling I had...). Get her in, arm her, sure enough... calf is comin butt first.  Call mom, said we've got problems, Ill call doc.  Call her, shes on her way out, while all this time I'm working with the calf. Long story short, 2.5 hours later of pushing and coaxing back legs and straps, and a heifer going down... A 60# heifer calf appears.... dead. Momma refused to get up, but finally does after a lot of work (afraid of prolapse, had to get her up fast). Needless to say we didn't get a chance to arm her again.... And now she acts as if she could drop another one.... it's gonna be a long night...

Two cows over due as of today, 2 and 3 days.  Went to barn last night before we went to bed.  We have a leanto on our barn there lays our pregant cow on her back wedged on a poll.  Had to get the skid loader to get her up.  Still no calves.  Heard the cotoyes howling in the woods west of us.  I'am getting to hate calving season.  It would be nice if something went right for a change.

It didn't happen this year but a few years back we helped watch dads heifers calving at night. Well there was one I thought we'd better pull. Black heifer. We roped her in the lean to. Got legs chained. Strapped on come along puller got pulled up snug. Heifer went bezerk and started swinging and dancing her rear end back and forth with the lethal weapon attached to her. My son and I are ducking as the contraption flew over head a couple times. Then the calf puller bar swung high enough it broke out the only light bulb in the barn. Dan and I hit the ground,pitch black,cow swinging the death bar over our heads,Billie screaming. We finally crawled to safety, got a flashlight got the heifer pulled. Just good quality family time spent together I guess.

randiliana said:

We always run into upsidedown calves have had as many as 6 out of 80 upsidedown, last year we had 2 out of 100. Some big, some small, seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. DH has gotten really good at turning them over. Always have a couple backwards, and last year the 2 backwards were out of an 9 year old cow and her 4 year old daughter. Neither had had a backwards before that. Size can have something to do with malpresentations, but mostly I think size of the calf causes head back and possibly leg back situations. As far as backwards or upside down, I don't really think it plays a big role.

Click to expand...

  I can only remember one upsidedown calf over appox. 40 years of calving cows. It was backwards upsidedown HW heifer out of a Limi X cow. That'll fool you, looks like an easy strait forward pull until the heads not coming. It looks like it would be hard on the calf's back. We pulled this one & it took right off. Not one of the huge HW's though.

Had 6 out of 30 backward a few years ago... Thought that was bad, but doesn't seem so much compared to some of these stories

I got one sent to me on my phone over the weekend...won't post the pic or name or anything but it is a big club calf breeder in IA... Pic and story I got is a 265 lbs. newborn, it looks like a normal stout newborn clubby, but looks a legit 250 plus in the picture...IVF calf... they thought the cow was bull bred, she was like 40 days past the IVF date...apparently it is common for IVF's to go way past, usually they are induced

Ever hear of something like this??

ur school's cow herd started with a pair of twins that weren't the brightest when it came to nursing. followed this set of twins with a nice little blancer heifer . and saturday had the train wreck i warned my friends here about. a small manchild heifer bred to i believe angus, had to take plan "C" to get the calf out, calf is still dopey and slow and doesnt help the heifer has NO milk and what little there was has mastetis, shes just an absolute train wreck

Had quite a weekend.  First Saturday found a cow starting to get ready to calve gave her an hour, still nervous not much pushing yet and no water sack.  Came back hour later doing nothing.  Tied her up and checked her, head but no legs.  Pushed back head and finally got front legs in birth canal and chains on and pulled.  Took about 45 minutes in all.  Calf is alive but not real good, it kind of had that off in a distance look in its eyes.  So any way tubed with colostrum and gave Vitamin b and Bo Se shot and Nursmate paste.  Been tubing every since calf will stand for a few minutes but still just has an I don't want to live look in its face.  I dodn't know what else to do it has had colustrum, elctrolytes, energy and about everything I think of.  Bad part is this was the easy one.  Went to check on calf about 4:30 am on Sunday to tube and see how she was doing and low and behold there was a new bull calf with our best cows uterus haning about 3 feet out of the back of her.  Called vet took about an hour to get it cleaned best we could and get it pushed back in.  Gave her an epidural and thought she was going to quit pushing.  Had to go finish feeding and we went back and she had it about pushed back out.  Vet came back got it back in and worked to make sure we had the horns completly inverted sewed back up and tied her up so she couldn't lie down.  So far she has quit pushing and hopefully it is going to stay in now just have to worry about infection.  At least her calf is doing well and nursing good.  So anyway after going 15 for 15 on the first ones this was a sucky weekend.

Off to a bad start.  Cow went down on Sunday. By Tuesday morning water bag was out but cow wasn't doing anything so pulled a 85# Eye Candy bull calf.  Pretty easy pull. Thought we were through the worst of it and maybe the cow would get up.  At 5:30pm cow still hadn't gotten up so went down to give calf some more colostrum and there was the cow with another set of feet sticking out (back feet).  Pulled a dead identical twin bull calf.  Cow decide to eat and drink so thought we had at least one live calf and the cow was going to be okay.  Next morning the cow was dead and now I have a orphan calf.  Hopefully he will take to the nurse cow.  Hope it gets better from here.